# Open Ownership ## URL ## Description OpenOwnership helps countries to publish standards-compliant beneficial ownership (BO) registers, which give details of the actual human owners and the people who can benefit from an entity's operations and profits, or control its activities. It's important to know a company's beneficial owners as sometimes other people or entities (e.g. a trust or shell company) are listed as owners on the corporate register, meaning that if you only search that register, you may not find the actual owners. An increasing number of countries are requiring disclosure of beneficial ownership. Open Ownership makes it easy to see if a country has a BO register, and if it is available to the public - each country has a page with this information:

The Bulgaria country page on OpenOwnership, which includes a hyperlink to the register

The 'Worldwide action on beneficial ownership transparency' [map](https://www.openownership.org/en/map/) shows which countries have BO registers:

Map showing which countries are planning (light blue), implementing (purple), or have live online registers (green)

To search for a country's page on OpenOwnership, scroll down to 'Find a specific country' on the [map page](https://www.openownership.org/en/map/). An efficient way to get to see which countries have BO registers freely available online is to download the [CSV](https://www.openownership.org/en/map/oo_all_country_data.csv) that covers all the countries, and filter the 'Who can access' column by 'general public':

Some of the country data in a filtered CSV opened in Excel

## Cost * [x] Free * [ ] Partially Free * [ ] Paid ## Level of difficulty


1

## Requirements Internet connection ## Limitations While a consolidated database of all BO registers would be incredibly useful, it's probably a pipe dream given that countries would have to decide to make BO disclosure a requirement of corporate registration, and they would have to make it openly available. So you still have to visit national online BO registers, if they exist, on an individual basis. ## Ethical Considerations \- ## Guides and articles OpenOwnership: [Beneficial ownership primer](https://www.openownership.org/en/about/what-is-beneficial-ownership-transparency/) OpenOwnership: '[What makes a beneficial owner? Exploring global differences](https://www.openownership.org/en/about/what-is-beneficial-ownership-transparency/)' - a useful article that discusses country differences in definition and type of beneficial ownership. ## Tool provider OpenOwnership ## Advertising Trackers * [x] This tool has not been checked for advertising trackers yet. * [ ] This tool uses tracking cookies. Use with caution. * [ ] This tool does not appear to use tracking cookies. | Page maintainer | | ------------------ | | Katherine de Tolly | | | --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://bellingcat.gitbook.io/toolkit/more/all-tools/open-ownership.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.