Project of public list of beneficiaries did not receive the support of "G 8"

19.06.2013

At the last summit of the Group of eight at Northern Ireland, British Prime Minister David Cameron made ​​a proposal to establish a public register of beneficial owners of companies. It is known, that the leaders of the "G 8" did not support the proposal, however, they noticed, that there is a necessity of improving mechanisms against tax evasion. The most important mechanism to fight tax evasion is the automatic exchange of tax information between the competent authorities. But, we should notice, that the idea of establishing a list of beneficial owners of companies could be done In the future, however, as participants of the summit noticed, the information in this list should be protected and be available only upon request of the tax authorities .

Based on:

https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/hm-treasury

Expert’s opinion

Lately we haven`t heard about England`s participation in different scandals. However, as we can see, David Cameron thought about ​​the list of beneficiaries has long for a long time, if he announced it at the summit.

Opening registry of beneficial owners will violate freedoms provided by the Constitution and Civil Code. This information naturally can not be in the public domain. It is possible, that in some countries such lists would be introduced. But the information about the final beneficiary can not be given simply because someone wanted to know it! It can be done only on basis of international agreements about the exchange of tax information.

Well, there are a lot of countries in the world, and probably not all of them at once will use such regulations. Because of that, businessmen would always find some ways to stay in the shadow

Irina Lomakina ( Director of Moscow office of “Honest&Bright” Company)