Beneficial Ownership Transparency: The Viability of Global Implementation of G20 High-Level Principles

Abstract

The concept of beneficial ownership originally came from dual ownership regime which allows the division of legal and beneficial ownership, serving good economic functions, i.e. protection of family property and personal privacy. However, as dual ownership structures, e.g. trust, have been abused to such an extent that the transparency now outweighs the economic values of dual ownership, at least for most developed economies of the world. The G20 High-Level Principles on Beneficial Ownership Transparency thus came into being, pushing forward an agenda for changing the law globally to make the identities of the beneficial owners transparent, with a broader term of beneficial ownership than its original use in trust law. In this paper, we argue that these Principles, made by and serving the interests of small exclusive group of developed countries, could not be applied universally as the rule-takers, i.e. developing countries, do not share the same concern as the developed world and are unwilling to counter a problem they did not consider as a priority. Under the pressure of robust review mechanisms and name-and-shame strategy deployed by FATF and relevant international financial bodies, the rule-takers are forced to make relevant changes, but the changes will just be artificial and superficial to bypass the Principles prescribed and recommended by the rule makers who are not themselves taking a serious step to implement them. Legal and beneficial ownership, money laundering, transparency, G20, developed and developing economies, divergence of priorities.