prvit

I'll just clear my cookies, change my VPN exit and continue posting. What's the point?

But that information isn’t public, it’s only visible to law enforcement.

This is how company ownership information should be treated too.

Because the Guardian says so.

This is a solved problem, you can simply refuse to work with charities that don’t share such information.

So? The name of that person doesn’t need to be public for the courts to be able to hold them accountable.

I really can’t see how your interest in not doing business with companies owned by people you like could possibly outweigh every business owners privacy interests.

When an individual has registered a car and is enjoying the right to operate a 6000 lbs death machine on public roads, why do they need their name hidden? What value in the society of granting them that privilege when they are enjoying legal protections and privileges not enjoyed by all members of society?

The real question you have to answer is “Why is it necessary for company ownership to be public information?”

> A service address isn't sufficient to, for example, easily piece together that one private owner has quietly purchased 70% of some town's resources, especially if they've done so via a collection of shells

What’s wrong here? Even with a perfect UBO registry that private owner could just get together with a couple of their buddies and divvy up that 70%.

What legal action are you going to take? Owning 70% of a town’s resources is generally not against the law.

Not at all. A company could be a one man shop which only does business with one other company, it’s not obvious why that would be more of a public activity than just being directly employed by a company.

Most companies probably do not own resources like land.

What actual use do you have for this information? Beyond “it’s nice to know”?

Is it not sufficient that you have a service address for the legal entity in case you need to sue it?

Why is it any more of a public activity than working for a company?

People do not start companies in Dubai instead of the EU because of paperwork, Dubai is particularly paperwork heavy (especially if you need a local bank account).

> Why should business owners be anonymous?

Why not? Generally EU countries do not like public lists of PII, why should business owners be treated differently?

What legitimate use do you have for this information?

I’ll offer a different take here.

More than 99% of the people whose information is listed in these registries are not corrupt public officials, Russian oligarchs, or [insert person you dislike here].

Public UBO registries do not strike a good balance between protecting the privacy of honest business owners and exposing corruption or whatever.