Hot on the heels of the lawsuit we filed in Montreal against the Quebec company register comes news that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC/Radio-Canada) is also suing the register. The CBC suit, filed on April 12, is on the basis that the register, by restricting access to the register is “violer la liberté de la presse” … Continue reading Now CBC Radio-Canada sues the Quebec Register too
Yesterday, OpenCorporates filed suit in the Superior Court (Civil Division) in Montreal, Quebec, for a declaratory judgement against the Quebec Registraire des Enterprises, to ensure that OpenCorporates data on Quebec companies remains freely available to journalists, NGOs and thousands of other users around the world. The suit is in response to a demand that the … Continue reading OpenCorporates takes Quebec company register to court
In a significant victory for transparency and common sense, today the European Court of Justice today ruled that personal data in company records was not subject to the so-called 'right to be forgotten', even for dissolved companies. This is a crucial judgement for corporate transparency, and for the fight against the use of companies for criminal purposes, … Continue reading European Court confirms company data can’t be whitewashed
Today, the International Open Data Conference will be going to Madrid, in Spain. Which is an odd choice for an open data event, given that the Spanish government has not been exactly a world (or even European) leader in open data. In fact, if you listen to Spanish transparency NGOs, there are even deeper problems. … Continue reading When will Spain walk the #opendata walk?
A little-known fact about OpenCorporates is that not only is it the largest open database of companies in the world, it's also probably the large database on nonprofits and charities in the world too. That's not because we've made a big effort to fetch nonprofit and charity data, but because many nonprofits and charities are … Continue reading Charity Registers and corporate data: the missing link
As we announced earlier this month, OpenCorporates is now pulling in Beneficial Ownership data from the UK's new PSC (Persons of Significant Control) register. This blog post is a somewhat wonkish explanation of how do we model that information (in layman's terms, how we understand the information and store as data), and in particular, how do that … Continue reading Modelling the UK Beneficial Ownership data
On Friday UK Companies House published the first data from its new 'Persons of Significant Control' (PSC) register (colloquially known as Beneficial Ownership). This is a pretty big deal, for a number of reasons: It's the world's first public national beneficial ownership register It's the first structured beneficial ownership data to be releases publicly It's being … Continue reading UK Beneficial Ownership information now in OpenCorporates
The latest dataset added to OpenCorporates is the list of operator licences from the UK Gambling Commission. This isn’t a huge dataset (nothing compared to the millions of US Business and Professional Licences that we already have), but it is quite interesting nevertheless. First, it’s a key dataset for Anti-Money-Laundering uses, as gambling licences is … Continue reading New dataset alert: UK gambling licences
This morning, at the London Anti-Corruption Summit, it was announced that France, the Netherlands, Nigeria and Afghanistan would create public beneficial ownership registers, and that Australia, New Zealand, Jordan, Indonesia, Ireland and Georgia will "agree to take the initial steps towards making similar arrangements". Of course the devil is in the details, but let's take this announcement … Continue reading Public Beneficial Ownership: We need open, not just public data
The title says it all. And it's fitting that we can make this announcement at the start of two days of anti-corruption summits in London, as it's clear that OpenCorporates is now a fundamental part of the anti-corruption universe. In the past couple of months OpenCorporates has: Played an important part in the Panama Papers, with OpenCorporates … Continue reading We did it! 100 million companies
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