Secret ownership of companies dangerous – Osinbajo

Olalekan Adetayo, Abuja

Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo on Monday said hidden corporate ownership posed serious danger to developing countries like Nigeria.

He said it has, therefore, become “a matter of life and death” for African countries to break the wall of secret corporate ownership.

Osinbajo stated this in his address at the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative Beneficial Ownership Conference taking place in Jakarta, Indonesia.

“I will be preaching to the converted if I say that hidden corporate ownership poses real and present danger to most countries, especially the developing ones such as ours,” he told the gathering.

He said experience had shown that anonymous corporate ownership could serve as vehicles for masking conflicts of interest, corruption, tax evasion, money laundering, and even terrorism financing.

Osinbajo cited a 2014 report by the One Campaign, titled the “One Trillion Dollar Scandal” which claimed that developing countries lose $1trn  annually to corporate transgressions, most of it traceable to the activities of companies with secret ownership.

He also mentioned the 2015 report of the High Level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows from Africa chaired by former South African President Thabo Mbeki which started that Africa had lost over $1trn over a 50-year period and that Africa loses more than $50bn  annually to illicit financial flows.

Osinbajo said, “Most of these illicit flows are perpetrated in the extractive sector and through companies with hidden ownerships.

“So for us in the developing world and especially in Africa, breaking the wall of secret corporate ownership is an existential matter. It is for us literarily a matter of life and death. Masked or Hidden corporate ownership is deeply implicated in the sad story of our underdevelopment.