Partner Kenneth Nunnenkamp spoke with the Risk Watch podcast about the Corporate Transparency Act—designed to help the United States government combat the use of shell companies for money laundering by requiring certain entities to disclose their beneficial owners.
Kenneth talked about the rationale behind keeping the beneficial ownership database—which is to be maintained by the US Department of Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network—private rather than making it accessible to the public.
“It could be that one day this database will be turned open because people will say ‘not a big deal’; but there’s information in there that is inherently privacy-protected,” Kenneth said.
“There’re going to have to create a scenario if they’re going to open it up to where only certain information comes out. But I can tell you that experience in other countries hasn’t necessarily been particularly positive where it’s been wide open because like any system it’ll be used for good and it’ll be used for less than good and you’ll have doxing type activity that can occur if you just throw this thing open.”