[us-open-gov] Beneficial ownership news, vacancies and latest research

[Isabelle Kermeen]

Dear US Open Gov community,

(apologies for cross-posting)

I hope you are well. I'm pleased to share with you some of Open Ownership's news, including vacancies, recent publications and upcoming events.

Vacancies (Open Ownership and partners)

1) Data Analyst: Open Ownership is looking for an experienced individual to join our data and technology team to help people across the world use and learn from beneficial ownership data in order to actively reduce corruption risks and improve governance

2) Vacancy: Projects Manager (supporting Opening Extractives programme, implemented by Open Ownership and EITI)

3) Consultancy: supporting the implementation of beneficial ownership transparency commitments in Indonesia and the Philippines within the Opening Extractives programme (implemented by Open Ownership and EITI)

News and publications
1) Briefing: Using beneficial ownership information in fisheries

2) Philippines scoping study on beneficial ownership transparency

3) Read our latest news piece: European Union takes important steps towards standardised and interoperable beneficial ownership information

4) In this new policy briefing, we explore the application of beneficial ownership transparency to listed companies, highlighting the complexities of identifying beneficial owners, the variance in international and national regulatory frameworks, and the mixed effectiveness of current transparency measures.

5) This policy briefing provides considerations to help policymakers and those implementing or supporting beneficial ownership transparency reforms to think through various issues and approaches toward ensuring effective transparency and oversight of investment funds.

6) In this blog post, we welcome our two newest team members, Onyi from Nigeria and Rodrigo from Mexico 

Events

1) Join our virtual launch event of v 0.4 of the Beneficial Ownership Data Standard (BODS) on 26 June: register here

2) Learn how GraphAware's Hume product can be used to analyse, examine and visualise BODS data in a free webinar on unlocking complex investigations with the power of graphs on 15 May.

3) OO's Executive Director Thom Townsend will be speaking about recent international developments based on the UNCAC at the 10th anniversary of the Oslo Anti-Corruption Conference, on 14 June. 

4) Join our side event and the sessions at which we are presenting during the International Anti-Corruption Conference in June, in Vilnius, Lithuania. Full details will follow soon.

Related news and content

1) New World Bank Guide on implementing a beneficial ownership register, to which we contributed (and accompanying blog post).

2) New World Bank publication on beneficial ownership register implementation with examples from Kenya, Nigeria, North Macedonia, and the UK (includes Open Ownership resources).

 3)  A new report was published by the UK Anti-Corruption Coalition and Tax Justice UK reviewing Britain's Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories' progress in setting up public registers of beneficial ownership.

Please share these with your colleagues and in your networks. Thank you very much in advance. In case you're interested in receiving our newsletter which we usually send every other month, please register here.

Thank you for reading!

Best wishes,
Isabelle

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	Isabelle Kermeen    isab...@openownership.org openownership.org | @openownership
Over 150 countries have committed to beneficial ownership transparency. Open Ownership works condensed hours; availability may be reduced on alternate Fridays.

[Alexander Howard]

Thank you so much for sharing all of this, Isabelle, and Open Ownership’s work on beneficial ownership.

You mention that the vacancies referenced are operated jointly with the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), an organization and effort which is an important part of the U.S. government’s open government arc. 

As folks may remember, joining EITI was a key commitment in the first US National Action Plan for Open Government in 2011. I watched Secretary of the Interior Salazar talk about it in Brazil, in 2012. 

The US then withdrew in 2017 and repealed a SEC rule that had been six years in the making: 

https://eiti.org/countries/united-states-america

If the White House had co-created a 5th National Action Plan with civil society in 2022 instead of imposing dozens of mostly pre-existing commitments into a report, it’s possible that we would now be seeing the results of more transparency and accountability around the mineral, gas, and oil industries that have resisted this standard since its inception, including a rebooted rulemaking.

I urge the Biden-Harris administration to stop stonewalling about revising commitments, as the OGP IRM recommended, and add new ones for Open Gov Week this month in a NAP 5.5 that include EITI — as the Obama-Biden administration did in 2016 when it celebrated OGP:

https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2016/09/20/celebrating-five-years-open-government-partnership-now-70-countries-strong

A commitment to open up beneficial ownership by going back to Congress to make the FinCEN registry into open government data would have the appropriate ambition and impact for a flagship or “challenge” commitment. I retain hope that doing so will be on the table this year, if the administration decides to be serious about regaining broken trust with civil society organizations.

With gratitude,

Alex

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