Beneficial Ownership Training in Latin America

Five EITI countries (Colombia, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras, and Peru) from Latin America gathered in Bogota on 26-27 September 2016 for preparing to submit the beneficial ownership roadmap as required in the 2016 EITI Standard. Participants came from each country multi-stakeholder groups (MSG), national secretariat, government officials from agencies responsible for company registration and civil society organizations. The workshop was organised by the German Cooperation through GIZ and had tehnical support from the EITI International Secretariat , ECLAC, CIAT (Inter-American Center of Tax Administrations). Participants in the training took stock on most common definitions of beneficial ownership and political exposed persons, the regulatory framework applicable to companies ownership, quality of information available or to be collected and uses of beneficial ownership information to inform other efforts such investigative journalist's work, activists and analysts. Participants agreed on the next steps back in each country leading to submitting the beneficial ownership roadmap as required in the 2016 Standard.

See images from the workshop here on flickr.

Presentations

• "What is Beneficial Ownership and why is it so important?", Carlos Mongue, Natural Resource Governance Institute
• "Illicit financial flows in Latin America and in the Andean mining sector", Ignacio Ruelas, Economic Comission for Latin America and the Caribbean 
• "Achievements and Lessons learnt from the Panama Papers", Juan Lewin, La Silla Vacia, Colombian independent journalists 
• "Beneficial Ownership in Colombia", Lina Velasquez, Secretariat of Transparency, Colombia 
• "Beneficial owners in the extractive industries", Miguel Angel Garcia, Secretariat of Finance and Public Credit, Mexico
• "The Panama Papers, the Clients of Mossack Fonseca in Peru", Milagros Salazar, CONVOCA, Peruvian independent journalists 

References to the 2016 EITI Standard:

EITI Requirement 2.5 on Beneficial Ownership 

EITI Guidance on beneficial Ownership

Beneficial Ownership Fact Sheet