Beneficial ownership transparency for global anti-corruption impact: Looking back to CoSP10 and ahead to CoSP11

Photo by Hunter Scott on Unsplash.

In December 2023, the Conference of the States Parties (CoSP) to the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) met for its tenth session to renew and build on global commitments to fight corruption. The adoption of Resolution 10/6 on Enhancing the use of beneficial ownership (BO) information to strengthen asset recovery marked a milestone in the growing global consensus around beneficial ownership transparency (BOT) as a crucial anti-corruption reform. Next week, States parties will meet again in Doha, Qatar, for the eleventh session of CoSP, against a global backdrop that has shifted significantly in the two years that have passed since CoSP10.

Progress since the adoption of Resolution 10/6

Resolution 10/6 signalled a greater focus on usability and impact in BO reform through provisions that support the effective use of BO information. The resolution calls upon States Parties to ensure access to adequate, accurate, and up-to-date BO information of legal persons and legal arrangements, and to maintain historical records, searchable by domestic competent authorities including financial intelligence units and tax administrations. It also urges States to facilitate the efficient exchange of BO information in a timely manner as well as through the use of digital and innovative technologies. Along with this, it urges States to facilitate access to BO information by public procurement authorities. These additional provisions built positively upon Resolution 9/7, adopted in 2021 at CoSP9.

Since 2023, Open Ownership has collaborated with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to organise regional meetings for over 150 participants across Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia to raise awareness of the resolution and promote effective implementation. Over the course of 2025, Open Ownership and other civil society partners have joined government delegations to attend UNCAC Intergovernmental Working Group meetings on prevention and asset recovery.

In April 2025, UNODC convened an Intergovernmental Meeting on Enhancing the Use of Beneficial Ownership Information to Strengthen Asset Recovery, mandated by Resolution 10/6. With input of technical expertise from Open Ownership, the meeting brought together practitioners from over 30 countries to exchange real-world lessons on legal frameworks; verification; compliance; data quality, accuracy, and interoperability; access regimes; and international cooperation for information exchange. The depth of engagement and expertise at the meeting reflected a growing maturity in BOT reform: not just building registries, but ensuring BO data is usable, connected, and applied in practice.

Open Ownership has also worked with UNODC to produce a series of case studies documenting how States have translated commitments into action. Among the progress signalled by these reform efforts and case studies are the creation or upgrading of BO registries; improved data quality and standardisation; interconnection with procurement systems; and strengthened inter-agency cooperation on asset recovery. They demonstrate reforms expanding beyond anti-money laundering obligations and technical compliance with international standards, and increasingly targeting a range of broader governance priorities, from domestic resource mobilisation to better public spending.

Where to go next?

The often sophisticated, transnational, and evolving nature of corrupt and illicit practices demands a response to match. The following developments can help countries realise the full impact of BO information in achieving key anti-corruption objectives.

• Improving data-sharing and cross-border cooperation

An obstacle to realising impact from BO reforms is the fragmentation of data and institutional siloes impeding the timely use of BO information in anti-corruption activities. States should continue to focus not only on data collection but also on its integration, verification, exchange, and use among multiple actors within and outside government. Jurisdictions should establish inter-agency protocols; data-sharing frameworks; and cross-agency interfaces, in line with safeguards on confidentiality and data protection. In particular, given the transnational nature of corruption, cross-border cooperation remains vital: regional and international data exchange frameworks are essential for meeting the challenges at hand.

In the Compromiso de Sevilla adopted at the UN’s Fourth International Financing for Development Conference, States committed to “Enhance mechanisms for information exchange between national beneficial ownership registries and consider the feasibility and utility of a global beneficial ownership registry”. This acknowledges the urgent need for transnational solutions relating to beneficial ownership.

• Embedding BO information in core governance processes

Integrating the use of BO information in governance processes can have an important preventive effect in the fight against corruption. Incorporating BO information into public procurement, licensing, real estate registration, political finance governance, and tax administration fosters transparency and integrity across key policy areas that can prevent corruption from taking root. This requires putting BO information into the hands of a broad range of government and non-government actors with oversight roles in areas such as extractives and the environment, political finance monitoring, and public procurement.

• Leveraging technology

If these efforts harness the power of technology and digital tools – for example, in building user-centred, high-quality digital BO registers where information is standardised, exchanged, and verified across different sources – as well as leveraging artificial intelligence, such as in developing automated analysis and red-flagging systems, the impact of such measures can be amplified at a lower cost in terms of human and financial resources.

Advancing beneficial ownership transparency at CoSP11

Commitments made under the UNCAC to date reflect the growing consensus on the importance of BOT in anti-corruption efforts. There is scope for further progress in international commitments as well as in domestic implementation to maximise the impact of reforms.

Open Ownership’s recommendations to States parties at CoSP11:

• Implement effective domestic BO registries with high-quality and standardised information to facilitate the impactful use of BO information, and make information in BO registers publicly and freely accessible and searchable online. Such access should be defined in accordance with domestic privacy and data protection legislation, but without undue obstacles or barriers.
• Develop effective mechanisms for data-sharing and cross-border cooperation to enable timely exchange of information within and across jurisdictions for given purposes.
• Use digital and innovative technologies and adopt existing international data standards to collect BO information that is centralised, verified, structured, and interoperable to facilitate effective data use and exchange with other domestic and foreign datasets.
• Support the active use of BO information in key anti-corruption areas that can have preventive effect, including public procurement, political finance transparency, and environmental governance.

With clear and ambitious commitments, CoSP11 offers an opportunity to drive effective and accountable implementation of the UNCAC at the domestic level while strengthening cooperation between States globally to achieve crucial anti-corruption impact.