This Is No Time for Backsliding on Dark Money

The global drive to strip away secrecy around money flows and asset ownership in the cause of fighting financial crime has been gathering momentum for more than a decade. The importance of the task gained added significance this year when Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine brought a focus on the yachts, real estate and other offshore bolt holes for the wealth of sanctioned Russian oligarchs. So it’s an odd time to be throwing sand in the gears of these efforts.

That’s effectively what the Court of Justice of the European Union did last month, in invalidating a 2018 anti-money laundering directive that gave the public access to beneficial ownership registers. The court ruled that the directive was a “disproportionate interference” in rights to privacy and protection of personal data under the EU’s fundamental charter. Member states, which were required to establish central registers showing the ultimate real owners of companies under an earlier anti-money laundering edict, have started curtailing access in response.