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Article

9 Oct 2014

Global Witness launches project mapping human rights abuses of anonymous company ownership globally

"The great rip off: Anonymous companies and their victims", Oct 2014

Tax evaders, terrorists, drugs cartels and corrupt politicians don't want to keep their stolen assets in their own names. So what they typically do is create a company...which technically owns their assets...[I]t's immensely difficult – sometimes totally impossible – to link the company back to the person who really owns it. It is quick, easy and cheap to create an anonymous company. You can do it in places renowned for secrecy such as Caribbean islands but you can just as easily do it in places such as the US state of Delaware. Even in places that do make shareholder information public, it is often still easy to make the owners anonymous...Anonymous companies are the global getaway cars for crime, corruption and tax evasion. We can stop them by requiring the names of the people who ultimately own and control companies to be put in the public domain...