Stephen Abbott Pugh

ASIC consults on proposals to bolster transparency on ownership and control of listed entities | ASIC Fair, strong and efficient financial system for all Australians.

The Australian Securities & Investments Commission has opened a public consultation on proposals to enhance the transparency of who ultimately owns or controls entities listed on Australian financial markets

www.asic.gov.au/about-asic/n...

#beneficialownership

The State of Beneficial Ownership: a free webinar at 2pm CET on 24th March 2026 featuring Stephen Abbott Pugh from Understand beneficial ownership and David McCurdie from spektr

The State of Beneficial Ownership

Join me and David McCurdie of Spektr for a free webinar at 2pm CET on Tuesday 24 March to discuss the latest developments when it comes to working out who owns what

www.spektr.com/webinar/the-...

#beneficialownership #AMLR #6AMLD #CDD #AML #UBO #openstandards

EU promises 48-hour ‘Delaware’ regime won’t lead to boom in bad bosses Trade unions say it’s an “open fast, fire fast” model. Justice Commissioner Michael McGrath tells POLITICO workers’ rights will be fully protected.

The European Commission’s upcoming proposal for an EU-wide one-stop shop for founding companies will not undermine national labor standards, Justice Commissioner Michael McGrath told POLITICO.

YouTube video by LastWeekTonight USAID: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Here’s last night’s story about USAID, why the Trump Administration has gutted it, who is being impacted, and how many nice things John can say about George W. Bush. It’s more than zero! By a very narrow margin, it is more than zero. youtu.be/tU8S13xYJNM

Learn about forthcoming improvements to UBO Verify, Kyckr's cross-border ownership discovery tool

developer.kyckr.com/guides/compa...

• Improved entity resolution
• Address-based verification
• Full audit trail for every resolution decision

#UBO #beneficialownership #AML

The Cat and the Stock-Footage CEO: How a Digital Trail Helped Unmask an Iranian Money Machine A woman named Elizabeth Newman supposedly runs two U.K.-registered crypto exchanges. But she appears to be a corporate fiction used as a front for a convicted embezzler whom the United States has accu...

The U.K. business registry recorded the firms’ CEO as a Dominican woman in her 40s – but OCCRP discovered that she appears to be completely fake, brought to life through stock footage: www.occrp.org/en/investiga...

How two UK-registered companies moved over a $1 billion USD in stablecoins for Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps - TRM Labs

www.trmlabs.com/resources/bl...

Where Trump's money comes from (and other mysteries) This week's newsletter covers a range of topics: The president's complex network of companies, how weather has gotten worse, a new tool to visualize the whole world at once. But I did reserve some tim...

Inspired by ProPublica’s new database, I created a visualization of the nearly 400 LLCs that make up Trump’s business empire.
That and more in this week’s newsletter. Read! Free!
www.howtoreadthisch.art/where-trumps...

Open Data Day 2026 - Celebrate #opendata where you are Join the annual celebration of open data all over the world, when communities gather to reach out to new people and build new solutions using open data.

Today marks the start of a week-long celebration of Open Data Day 2026.

Visit opendataday.org to see more than 100+ events planned worldwide.

And follow @okfn.bsky.social who support open data and open knowledge globally

#opendataday #ODD26 #OpenDataDay2026 #opendata

@elizabethbitmeehan.com Anything worrying jump out at you from the Delaware trusts / beneficial ownership bill? legis.delaware.gov/BillDetail/1...

The Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission has launched a public consultation on granting legitimate interest access to beneficial ownership information on trusts and legal arrangements.

Submissions due by 24 March 2026

www.cysec.gov.cy/CMSPages/Get...

#beneficialownership #legitimateinterest

How the former president of Cyprus is linked to sanctions evasion by Lukashenko’s ‘bagman’ For the first time, a top-tier European politician has been caught assisting in the circumvention of sanctions. The Belarusian Investigative Centre (BIC) has discovered that a firm belonging to the fo...

Indirectly and directly: how companies linked to Cyprus' former president helped Lukashenko’s bagman dodge EU sanctions

New investigation by @belarusfiles.bsky.social with @cirency.bsky.social, German ZDF, @derstandard.at, @papertrailmedia.de and @occrp.org

investigatebel.org/en/investiga...

Axel Springer poised to buy Telegraph in £500mn deal German media group has gatecrashed a proposed acquisition by the owner of the Daily Mail

Massive UK media scoop - Germany's Axel Springer is poised to agree a shock £500mn deal for the Telegraph in a move that will scupper the acquisition of the UK newspaper group by the Daily Mail. W/ the FT's finest @JFK_America @ArashMassoudi

www.ft.com/content/e5cb...

Microsoft Virtual Events Powered by Teams Microsoft Virtual Events Powered by Teams

The fourth edition of the Multinational Enterprise Information Platform will be unveiled later this month.

Register now to join the launch event at 2:30pm CET on Wednesday 18 March events.teams.microsoft.com/event/838ce9...

#opendata #MEIP #OpenDataDay

In 2023, the platform matched over 130,000 subsidiaries and 120,000 websites to the 500 multinational enterprises www.oecd.org/en/data/dash...

Read their 2025 blog post to learn more oecdstatistics.blog/2025/02/21/m...

#MEIP #opendata

This leverages open data sources such as the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation, @opencorporates.bsky.social, @openownership.bsky.social, @wikidatacommunity.bsky.social and more to link subsidiaries to key data

For years, the OECD Statistics and United Nations Statistics Division have sought to tackle this by pulling together information for their Multinational Enterprise Information Platform and publishing it as open data www.oecd.org/en/data/dash... #MEIP #opendata

Yet it can be very difficult to capture a full picture of their cross-border activities due to information being held nationally rather than internationally

Mapping the ownership structures and activities of the world’s largest 500 multinational enterprises 🌐 🏦

In 2023, the top 500 multinational enterprises generated over $21 trillion USD in revenues, greater than the combined GDP of the European Union.

www.oecd.org/en/data/dash...

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Qatar warns war will force Gulf to stop energy exports within weeks Gas producer says it will take ‘weeks to months’ to restore deliveries after Iranian drone strike

Qatar warns war will force Gulf to stop energy exports within weeks ft.trib.al/JQxKy5e

Explore Financial Disclosures From President Trump and 1,500 of His Appointees - ProPublica Use this database to explore potential conflicts of interest for President Donald Trump and his team. The documents disclose positions officials have held outside government, their assets and their de...

NEW: Over the past year, we've been collecting thousands of financial disclosure documents from across the Trump administration. Now we're making them searchable. Look up names, assets, former employers across 1,500+ Trump appointees and 3,000+ ethics documents.

The State of Beneficial Ownership: a free webinar at 2pm CET on 24th March 2026 featuring Stephen Abbott Pugh from Understand beneficial ownership and David McCurdie from spektr

The State of Beneficial Ownership

Join me and David McCurdie of Spektr for a free webinar at 2pm CET on Tuesday 24 March to discuss the latest developments when it comes to working out who owns what

www.spektr.com/webinar/the-...

#beneficialownership #AMLR #6AMLD #CDD #AML #UBO #openstandards

"Little attention was paid when Ansari bought a collection of mansions on The Bishops Avenue, one of the capital’s most exclusive postcodes, for £73 million in 2013. The sale was made through a shell company registered in the Isle of Man in which Ansari is named as the only beneficial owner"

Global Energy Ownership Tracker The Global Energy Ownership Tracker provides information on the chain of ownership for various energy projects. The data maps each level of the chain from the direct owner (as in, the lowest-level ide...

Source: Global Energy Monitor, Global Energy Ownership Tracker, February 2026 release

globalenergymonitor.org/projects/glo...

HT to @annamowat.bsky.social, @gabelouis.bsky.social and the whole @globalenergymon.bsky.social for publishing this data

#opendata #openstandards

30% of ownership structures include at least one unknown entity — up from 18% in 2024

Approximately 8.2% of ownership structures have connections to high-risk jurisdictions (as defined by the EU list of high-risk third countries and the FATF list), up from ~5% in 2024. Iran and the UAE are tied as the most frequently appearing high-risk jurisdictions

The average number of layers (depth of the ownership chain) is 2.72, with most structures extending 1–3 layers deep. The maximum observed chain depth is 17 layers, up from 10 in 2024

86% of entities have complete ownership information with data showing confirming that - while full ownership is common - non-controlling minority stakes are extensively tracked

It combines ownership data from nine of @globalenergymon.bsky.social sectoral trackers with coal plants being the most represented system, followed closely by oil and gas plants

Global Energy Ownership Tracker The Global Energy Ownership Tracker provides information on the chain of ownership for various energy projects. The data maps each level of the chain from the direct owner (as in, the lowest-level ide...

The dataset covers 27,980 entities and 25,779 ownership relationships showing the companies which run projects and the parent companies which own them globalenergymonitor.org/projects/glo...