On November 24, the Institute for Development of Freedom of Information (IDFI) presented a toolkit and regional study on beneficial ownership.

The regional study on beneficial ownership was prepared by IDFI and its partner organizations from Visegrad Group, with the goal of overviewing legislation and practice on beneficial ownership transparency in Georgia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia.

The analysis of the legislation and practice in Georgia led to the following main findings:

- More than 65,000 transactions and 31 suspicious transactions that were above the threshold provided by the legislation on the prevention of illicit income legalization were carried out between 2018 and 2020 with the involvement of legal entities registered in high-risk jurisdictions and legal entities registered by them on the territory of Georgia.

- Given the existing challenges, it is necessary to extend transparency standards for beneficial owners to more fields. Furthermore, to effectively protect the openness and universal access to information regarding beneficial owners, it is necessary to establish a public register of beneficial ownership.

- As a first step, it is necessary to extend the openness of beneficial owners to other areas, as has been done with broadcasting and commercial banking. In particular, such areas could be public procurement, state property auctions, and the extractive industry. 

Please find the full report here

Additionally, IDFI introduced a toolkit on mechanisms and methods for monitoring beneficial owners.

"Journalists and civil activists have led to many victories in respect to beneficial ownership disclosure. The toolkit we have presented today is intended for them. The toolkit includes specific recommendations, practical examples, instructional methods, as well as online resources to identify beneficial owners and who really controls a company,” noted Giorgi Kldiashvili, Executive Director of IDFI.

Following the presentation, the award ceremony for the winners of the Analytical Article Contest “Data for Change” was held. The contest aimed to encourage the use of open data for analytical articles.

The winners of the contest:

  - I place - Anatoly Korepanov - "Analysis of the Municipal Sports Policy in Imereti Region and the  Activities of Sports Organizations Subordinated to the City Halls."

  - II place - Nino Talikadze - "The State of Food Security - Latest Trends in Numbers."

  - III place - Imedi Todua - "Suicide Dynamics in Georgia."

Due to the excellent quality of the articles submitted for the contest, the contest commission unanimously decided to award the authors of two additional articles with 100 GEL gift cards of the Biblus store, together with the symbolic prizes.

-  Davit Domuzashvili - "Assessing the Impact of Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction Measures in the Transportation Sector Based on Available Statistics."

-  Mate Nebadze – “The Protection of the Right to Education in Georgian Educational Institutions - Analysis of Statistics of Data on Students of Preschool, General, Higher and Vocational education systems.”

Almost 30 individuals took part in the contest. The award-winning articles will be published via the IDFI website (www.IDFI.ge) and social media (Facebook; Twitter) in accordance with copyright protection.

The event was held in the framework of the project “Empowered Civil Society and Enhanced Beneficial Ownership Transparency Standards for Good Governance.“ The project is funded by Visegrad International Foundation, Visegrad Grants Program, co-financed by the Czech, Hungarian, Polish, and Slovak governments. The mission of the foundation is to encourage sustainable regional ideas in Central Europe.

The photo gallery can be found here