The international agenda on transparency of beneficial ownership (BO) has gained significant momentum in the past decade. The 2012 Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Recommendations 24 and 25 provided important guidance and were complemented by continuous effort in the framework of the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes. Going one step further, the Fourth and Fifth Anti-Money Laundering EU Directives (AMLD) introduced a clear framework for enhancing the transparency of beneficial ownership (BO) based on the availability and exchange of reliable beneficial ownership information.

In contributing to the international on-going efforts to enable countries to access and share reliable beneficial ownership information on 24- 25 June 2021 the Council of Europe, in co-operation with the European Union, organised an international Conference on Advancing Beneficial Ownership Transparency. The Conference targeted countries participating in two joint programmes of the EU and the Council of Europe, the Horizontal Facility for the Western Balkans and Turkey and the Partnership for Good Governance. The sessions were led by renown international experts and pioneering practitioners from more than 10 jurisdictions.

This event is a follow up to another international conference on beneficial ownership which took place in October 2018. Whereas the 2018 Conference succeeded at building a shared understanding of the need of establishing mechanisms for identification of beneficial ownership and the benefits that could derive from it, the focus of this new forum was on the challenges of instituting and managing public central registers of beneficial ownership information, which had already been identified as a fulcrum for progress on BO transparency by the FAFT recommendations and the EU standards.

During the Conference, BO registers were presented as a tool that needs to be effectively managed and utilized; a shared undertaking that requires the concerted effort of different stakeholders from the private and public sector, as well as civil society. In looking forward, more than 130 participants discussed the interoperability of registers across nations, as the next challenge for effectively increasing BO transparency.

The event was hosted by the joint Action Against Economic Crime in South East Europe and Turkey in the framework of the Horizontal Facility for the Western Balkans and Turkey 2019, and the joint project Strengthening Measures to Prevent and Combat Economic Crime in the Eastern Partnership Countries in the framework of the Partnership for Good Governance. These projects are funded by the European Union and the Council of Europe and implemented by the Council of Europe.