Opening up, slowly – beneficial ownership registers, a tour

The need to discover who is behindcomplex corporate structures enabling serious crimes from tax evasion to terrorism is not disputed but progress towards greater transparency through public beneficial ownership registers has proved fitful, at best. Mark Godfrey, Keith Nuthall, Raghavendra Verma, Julian Ryall and Paul Cochrane assess the distance travelled by a series of jurisdictions across the world and how far they still need to go.