Integrity of power, transparency of business and pubic control are the key components of the reforms in Ukraine, supported by the International Renaissance Foundation throughout the years.
Integrity of power, transparency of business and pubic control are the key components of the reforms in Ukraine, supported by the International Renaissance Foundation throughout the years.
As a result of these efforts, Ukraine became the first country in the world to give free access to public to the register of beneficial owners (controllers) of enterprises. That means anyone can use and analyze such data, thus exercising public control.
Starting from 2015, this information became a part of the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, Individual Entrepreneurs and Public Organizations. This breakthrough was made possible due to the anti-corruption legislation on beneficial owners, developed by the group of public experts with the support of the International Renaissance Foundation and adopted by the Verkhovna Rada in 2014.
However, the current procedure for information disclosure on beneficial owners needs to be improved.
The next step in this direction is to reveal true company owners, not the titular ones. To this end, the Anti-Corruption Center, with the support of the International Renaissance Foundation, is currently implementing the project to verify information on beneficiaries of extractive companies in the Unified State Register.
The same goal is also pursued by a new government decision seeking to create a working group on the implementation of the mechanism of information verification on beneficial owners. It was approved by the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine earlier this year.
Experts will work on the creation and implementation of an effective mechanism to verify the authenticity and completeness of data on beneficial owners. As the authors of the idea admit, Ukraine will be a pioneer in this issue, as there are no established and effective tools in the world to solve the problem of verification of true company owners.
The working group includes Oleksiy Orlovsky, Democratic Practice Program Initiative Director of the International Renaissance Foundation, who from the very beginning promoted the idea of disclosure of beneficial owners in Ukraine.
In addition, the public in the working group will be represented by Andriy Ginkul, Head of the Public Council under the Ministry of Justice, and Sergiy Pavlyuk, Transparency International Project Manager. The group will also include the representatives of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine, Ministry of Finance, the State Financial Monitoring Service of Ukraine, the National Agency for Prevention of Corruption, the National Agency of Ukraine for Detection and Management of Assets Obtained through Corruption and Other Crimes.
