Hacker News Reader

Comment by ghusto | Hacker News Reader

I could be wrong, but I believe this is the same thing?

https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/companies-house

> And why shouldn’t your role as a board member of a charity be public knowledge? Do you disagree with the charity’s mission or something? Why’d you agree to serve?

I have personal reasons, and that's the point; they're personal. I shouldn't have to air them out to get vindication. More to the point, why _should_ it be public knowledge? It certainly doesn't help with any of this money laundering or shell account business, I've seen proof of that first hand.

View on HN

Again, what does a ruling from the EU Court of Justice have to do with the UK post-Brexit? Is the UK similarly removing access to ownership information that is currently available? Is it doing it due to this EU court’s ruling?

Transparent ownership and transparent management certainly does help with money laundering and shell companies. What good is a shell company to launder money with if its ownership can be pierced easily with publicly available information? I’m sure this statement hits very close to home for you given the fact that everyone knows you were involved with <insert charity you are no longer involved with> simply by googling the relevant charity. Do you think a drug lord out of South America is going to be sitting on a board or owning a company if they can be found out just be googling or sending in some paperwork? Maybe, but if they’re smart they’ll know that serving on the board of a charity will plaster their name all over the place and they will opt out.

Just deleted my long rant of a reply, because it wasn't going to be constructive.

The only thing I think is important enough to keep is this though:

> What good is a shell company to launder money with if its ownership can be pierced easily with publicly available information? I’m sure this statement hits very close to home for you given the fact that everyone knows you were involved with <insert charity you are no longer involved with> simply by googling the relevant charity.

I can't tell if you're being satirical, sarcastic, or actually implying I was involved in fraud at that place because that's the only possible reason I could have for not wanting my name there any more.

In case you're serious; there are reasons other than bad ones for people to do this. Not everyone is an arsehole, and not not everyone is out to screw other people over.

I guess that's why all this irks me so much. We're again punishing the 99% of normal people with normal reasons, for the 1% of arseholes in the world. _We're structuring our society around laws for the bad minority_.

I think we can do better.

They'll do what even the most incompetent drug dealers in America have done to own cars and houses since the beginning of time: get a straw owner. If they're caught, lying on a UBO form will be 3 years in prison which will run concurrent with the 10 or 20 years they get for the drugs.

So that everyone can assess the character of the people running the charity.

This is a solved problem, you can simply refuse to work with charities that don’t share such information.

Because an actual human person needs to take responsibility and be accountable. That is the job of a director. The buck has to stop somewhere.

So? The name of that person doesn’t need to be public for the courts to be able to hold them accountable.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com