Arlene McCarthy (S&D). - Mr President, I wish to thank our joint rapporteurs, Mr[nbsp ]Kariņš and Ms[nbsp ]Sargentini. I want to focus on this very fundamental issue of public disclosure of beneficial ownership of companies. Introducing public disclosure of the beneficial owners of a company is, of course, a vital step forward in enhancing transparency, but it is equally important that it cannot be easily circumvented. There is ample evidence that some shell companies are at the forefront of criminal activities, from money laundering to tax evasion.

Criminal money laundered into the financial system accounts for an estimated 2 to 5[nbsp ]% of yearly global GDP. In 2010, African countries lost EUR[nbsp ]44.3 billion through illicit financial flows – which is more than the EUR[nbsp ]32.9 billion that Africa received in aid the same year. This robs African countries of the resources they need to invest in health, agriculture, infrastructure and poverty reduction. So while in principle the EU’s public disclosure rules are designed to deliver accurate and up-to-date information on the beneficial ownership of all EU companies, in practice they may prove not to be robust or effective. That is because, regrettably, Parliament’s proposal simply follows the Council weak position on the definition of a beneficial owner. The 25[nbsp ]% threshold for disclosure will limit transparency and may only assist those intent on dodging the rules. Perhaps those are the jurisdictions that Mr[nbsp ]Engel just mentioned, and perhaps that is why the Council went for this higher threshold, because – perhaps – the UK Government wanted this owing to its offshore concerns.

In a recent case we also saw that a Swiss commodities giant was able to use 18.75[nbsp ]% in a multinational oil company to set up a series of shell companies. It bribed corrupt officials in Angola. If the threshold had not been at 25[nbsp ]%, this corrupt company would have had to divulge what was actually going on behind the company. That is why my group has set a threshold for 10[nbsp ]%. I urge colleagues here to vote in favour of that, because if we are serious about setting global standards, we should not go for a low threshold on public disclosure.