On February 27-28, Kyiv hosted the 42nd meeting of the Board of Directors of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI). In addition to the Board meeting, other talks were held, in particular, a round table discussion dedicated to the opening of the data on beneficial owners of companies “Beneficial ownership: best practices in opening important information for good governance in the extractive sector”. The purpose of the event was to exchange experience in the field of data disclosure to ensure the effective management in the extractive industry. In particular, the round table participants spoke about how the information on beneficiary owners can increase the transparency in the extractive sector and build trust between stakeholders.
Opening the discussion, Oleksiy Orlovsky, a member of the EITI Board of Directors, Democratic Practice Program Director of the International Renaissance Foundation, reminded that in 2015 Ukraine launched a register of beneficial owners for the public, and pointed to the “gaps” to be taken into consideration by countries, in preparation for disclosure of the aforesaid data:
- Not all business entities provide necessary information to this register. This is primarily due to relatively low-level fines. The maximum fine is USD 320.
- Low-level search in the register.
- Lack of similar registers in other countries, especially in offshore jurisdictions. Presently, in addition to Ukraine, data on beneficial owners were opened by the United Kingdom.
- Rendering the Ukrainian register data, originally entered in Cyrillic alphabet, by Latin script.
- Lack of a comprehensive procedure for beneficial owner verification. Developing a beneficial owner verification procedure is one of Ukraine’s commitments made within the framework of the Open Government Partnership in Ukraine (OGP Ukraine).
The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative is an independent and voluntarily internationally supported transparency standard, that is being implemented in 48 countries of the world. Earlier, the EITI Board meeting was held in Ukraine in December 2015. The EITI Board meets twice or four times a year to discuss progress in the implementation of the EITI standards and other strategic issues related to the EITI.
