Missing and Incorrect Data: Patterns Left Visible. Uncovering Financial Crimes Through Beneficial Ownership Opacity and Non-Compliance

Beneficial ownership registers (BORs) are an example of digital anti-corruption interventions aimed at improving transparency in the public and private sectors by identifying the real owners of companies and other legal entities. Since 2015, several European countries have implemented BORs to prevent the misuse of corporate structures for financial crimes such as corruption and money laundering. However, despite their widespread adoption, the impact of this transparency policy on corruption levels and the adaptation strategies employed by corruption networks to comply with these regulations remain underexplored in academic literature. This paper investigates the effectiveness of BORs as an anti-corruption measure by examining how country-specific factors—such as regulatory frameworks, institutional capacity, and implementation practices—affect the quality and reliability of beneficial ownership data. Additionally, the study explores the role of institutional weaknesses, such as lack of verification mechanisms and insufficient cross-border cooperation, in enabling the submission of incorrect BO data, which can undermine the policy's impact. By analyzing the legal frameworks, BOR data quality, and conducting interviews with key stakeholders involved in the beneficial ownership data ecosystem across six European countries—Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Slovakia, Ukraine, and the UK—this paper sheds light on the effects of BORs in combating corruption across diverse contexts. The analysis will focus on how variations in data quality, including missing or incomplete information, can be systematically used to assess and predict corruption and financial crime risks. Finally, the paper will address key methodological challenges in measuring the impact of BORs on corruption risk, offering insights into how public-sector interventions like transparency registers can be regulated to better achieve their intended outcomes.