Tax havens have perfected the art of offering services that bypass laws and regulations in other countries. The lack of transparency regarding the ownership of shell companies and trusts, and what goes on within them, has made tax havens a useful tool for everything from tax evasion to corruption, money laundering, and terrorist financing.

The demand for greater transparency in ownership within tax havens has therefore been at the core of efforts by governments and civil society organizations to combat these harmful activities – a battle in which transparency advocates seemed to be constantly winning new victories, and where greater openness was being pushed through in more and more countries. But in November of last year, things took a turn.

After several years of continuous progress in establishing public registries of the actual owners of a company, a ruling from the EU Court of Justice last year was described as a massive setback in the fight for transparency.

This interview is an exerpt from an episode of the Norwegian podcast “Pengeland”. In this interview we speak with Maira Martini, who will provide us with a deeper understanding of this issue. She leads the work on transparency solutions at the global secretariat of Transparency International and is among the leading experts in Europe in her field.

The hosts for this episode are Peter Ringstad and Julie Brun Bjørkheim.

Mixing and music by Kristoffer Lislegaard.