Friday lunchtime lecture: Can open beneficial ownership data help curb corruption?

Friday lunchtime lectures are for everyone and are free to attend. You bring your lunch, we provide tea and coffee, an interesting talk, and enough time to get back to your desk.
Each year, over billions of dollars in illicit funds – the fruit of crime, corruption, or tax evasion – pass through anonymous shell companies. The owners of these companies remain hidden, escaping accountability and passing on the costs of their illicit activities to our communities.
In this session, Zosia Sztykowski from OpenOwnership will answer the questions: how can beneficial ownership data help solve these problems? Why is it important that this information is available as open data? And what are the lessons learned from the UK’s first-of-its-kind open data register of beneficial ownership? Finally, get a sneak peak at the OpenOwnership Register, a platform for global beneficial ownership information being developed by OpenCorporates, Global Witness, Open Contracting Partnership, The B Team, The Web Foundation, and Transparency International.
Zosia Sztykowski is the Project Coordinator for OpenOwnership, a new project to build a open register of global beneficial ownership in the public interest. With a background in cultural analysis and feminist organising, Zosia is dedicated to effecting policy and shifting norms in the interest of a more equal, more open society. Zosia recently graduated with an MSc in cultural sociology from the London School of Economics, where she earned the Hobhouse Memorial Prize for her dissertation research.