Africa Beneficial Ownership regional conference

Thank you to over 300 participants in our joint regional webinar on “Transparency of beneficial ownership: from technical recommendations to implementation” held online last week in collaboration with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the African Training Institute (ATI).

Coming from more than 40 countries across Africa, the event brought together representatives from commerce registers, central banks, FIU, procurement agencies and asset recovery agencies.

“The idea of this webinar was to take the path from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recommendations, and walk through all the steps a country needs to go through to implement a Beneficial Ownership Register,” explained Key Expert on BO Alexandre Taymans, adding “this marks the very first joint event between the EU Global Facility and IMF and ATI.”

The sessions were designed for national stakeholders typically involved in establishing, operating, and/or using beneficial ownership frameworks within their jurisdictions to enable them to acquire a comprehensive overview of :

• ????The technical requirements, including the new features of the revised Rec 24 and the ongoing FATF discussion on the revision of Rec 25;
• ????The available sources of BO information, including the best practices and key challenges that countries face while trying to address impediments to the various requirements of the FATF multi-pronged approach;
  ???? The EU Global Facility’s multistakeholder strategy to (i) enhance BO disclosure regimes and their effectiveness, and (ii) increase national, regional and international cooperation and networks on AML/CFT;
  ???? The business and technical requirements and operational aspects to consider when setting up a beneficial ownership registry;
  ???? The possible mechanisms aimed, during the different phases of a BO Register implementation, at ensuring that the beneficial ownership information is accurate and up to date as well as timely accessible.

Following these sessions, the event included an open discussion where practical case studies were discussed to highlight some of the points discussed in the morning. These included:

• • -The steps and elements to consider when designing and implementing a BOR (stakeholder engagement, procurement, monitoring)
  • -What are the control and verification mechanisms that can be implemented, and at what stage of the BOR implementation
  • -Exchange of country experiences from North Macedonia, Latvia, Ghana, Kenya.