Beneficial Ownership as a Tool for Transparency in Corporate Ghana: An Introductory Piece

Abstract

Beneficial ownership transparency and disclosure requirements are some of the topical issues today. In the past, beneficial ownership disclosure or related information has enabled researchers and investigators to draw insights on the sources of wealth and linkages to people across the world. Such information helped to have insights on the beneficial owners of businesses that are usually covert in contrast to the legal owners that are usually overt. The work of multi-stakeholder institutions has driven the progress in beneficial ownership across the world. The new developments on beneficial ownership are at the back of various investigative works which fight corruption, illicit financial flows, terrorism, money laundering and tax evasion. The new idea is to develop a database based on a standardised form that can help to lift the veil of incorporation. In so doing, it will be possible to reveal the beneficial owners of companies, trusts and state-owned enterprises. In this introductory paper, there is a review of the beneficial ownership issues in Ghana with a focus on the global context. It explored the work of the Registrar General’s Department in Ghana on beneficial ownership. There is a special focus on the resource governance issues and the tools available on beneficial ownership reporting or disclosure. The plans on beneficial ownership have also been covered. The new Company Act, 2019 (Act 992) has new concepts of beneficial ownership introduced which have been discussed. The lessons on beneficial ownership for other countries have also been covered as much as the efforts of multi-stakeholder initiatives like the extractives industry transparency initiative (EITI). The discussions on these issues provide relevant insights for practitioners, researchers and investigators to understand the new developments on beneficial ownership in Ghana within the global context.

Keywords: beneficial ownership, transparency, EITI, disclosure, Ghana, multi-stakeholder initiative

JEL Classification: D73, G2, G3, L7, O55, N57, Y20