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Stephen Abbott Pugh

@stephenabbottpugh.bsky.social
671 followers 939 following 1.6K posts

Beneficial ownership transparency, UBO data and standardisation expert. Technical consultancy support www.beneficialownership.co.uk Talk to me about the Beneficial Ownership Data Standard www.beneficialownership.co.uk/data-…

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Stephen Abbott Pugh @stephenabbottpugh.bsky.social · 10h
“GAO’s analysis of federal award data highlights the hundreds of billions of dollars vulnerable to beneficial ownership-related fraud risks. Awards, such as contracts awarded to foreign businesses, are among those categories that are vulnerable to beneficial ownership fraud risks.”
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Kashmir Hill @kashhill.bsky.social · 18h
Meta is using a radical interpretation of a tax credit for “research and experimentation” to get billions of dollars off GPUs for its A.I. data centers. My latest with Jesse Drucker, @elitan.bsky.social and @mikeisaac.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2026/09/30/t...
nytimes.com
How Meta Uses A.I. Data Centers to Avoid Billions in Federal Taxes (Gift Article)
Meta is exploiting a lucrative tax break intended to support research and experimentation. Its own accountants say the gambit is risky.
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Stephen Abbott Pugh @stephenabbottpugh.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
The New York Department of State is now the 50th source connected to OpenCheck, thanks to its publishing of open corporate data via a live API opencheck.world List of sources: opencheck.world/sources Features: opencheck.world/features #LEI #opendata #openstandards #OSINT
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Stephen Abbott Pugh @stephenabbottpugh.bsky.social · 19h
@jessmarindavis.bsky.social Read your MER Substack post and wanted to flag this beneficial ownership exploration project from 2023/24 in case it is of interest
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Stephen Abbott Pugh @stephenabbottpugh.bsky.social · 20h
Sri Lanka's cabinet has approved changes to the country's 109-year-old trust laws to expose beneficial owners in line with FATF's recommendation 25 www.ft.lk/front-page/C...
ft.lk
Cabinet clears 109-year-old Trust Ordinance overhaul to expose beneficial owners | Daily FT
The Cabinet has approved Gazetting amendments to the 109-year-old Trust Ordinance and submitting them to Parliament, in a move to make the ownership of trusts more transparent and bring the law in lin...
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Stephen Abbott Pugh @stephenabbottpugh.bsky.social · 22h
Today is the last day of the pilot project of Switzerland's Transparency Register (TranspaReg) where up to 8000 legal entities have tested submitting their beneficial ownership information ahead of the full TranspaReg launch tomorrow www.transpareg.admin.ch/de/pilot #beneficialownership #UBO
transpareg.admin.ch
Pilotversuch
Bevor das Bundesgesetz über die Transparenz juristischer Personen und die Identifikation der wirtschaftlich berechtigten Personen (TJPG) in Kraft tritt und das Transparenzregister in den operativen Be...
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Stephen Abbott Pugh @stephenabbottpugh.bsky.social · 23h
"Canada should continue to progress the implementation of a pan-Canadian corporate beneficial ownership framework to ensure aligned beneficial ownership obligations, including central beneficial ownership registry or alternative mechanisms, are implemented" www.fatf-gafi.org/content/dam/...
fatf-gafi.org
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Stephen Abbott Pugh @stephenabbottpugh.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Canada has "considerably advanced its framework for beneficial ownership transparency" but "overall effectiveness is impacted by uneven implementation across provinces and territories", according to the latest report from the Financial Action Task Force www.fatf-gafi.org/content/fatf...
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Stephen Abbott Pugh @stephenabbottpugh.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
The New York Department of State is now the 50th source connected to OpenCheck, thanks to its publishing of open corporate data via a live API opencheck.world List of sources: opencheck.world/sources Features: opencheck.world/features #LEI #opendata #openstandards #OSINT
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Stephen Abbott Pugh @stephenabbottpugh.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Looking forward to delivering an innovation talk at the EITI conference in Brussels next week eiti.org/eiti2026 I’ll be demonstrating how OpenCheck helps people check beneficial ownership, state ownership and PEPs information for companies in line with EITI requirements opencheck.world
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Reuters @reuters.com · 29/09/2026
EXCLUSIVE: Anthropic warns AI may pose 'existential risks to humanity' in IPO filing reut.rs/4hvqeY1
reut.rs
EXCLUSIVE: Anthropic warns AI may pose 'existential risks to humanity' in IPO filing
Anthropic plans to caution potential investors in its IPO that advanced ​AI could pose "catastrophic or existential risks to humanity," an extraordinary warning by a company seeking to profit from the same technology.
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Stephen Abbott Pugh @stephenabbottpugh.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
𝐋𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐁𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐎𝐰𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 𝐓𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐲 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐕𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥 𝐀𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐭𝐬 - a new report from the European Union's Global Facility on Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism www.global-amlcft.eu/wp-content/u... #beneficialownership #UBO
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Open Ownership @openownership.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
How can beneficial ownership data be seamlessly connected across borders, and what steps are required to achieve this? Since 2025, over 50 experts from the private sector, international bodies, and civil society have been working to answer this question. www.openownership.org/en/publicati...
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Stephen Abbott Pugh @stephenabbottpugh.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Ownership data on the world’s 500 largest corporate groups and their 126,000+ subsidiaries - now published in Beneficial Ownership Data Standard format stephenabbottpugh.medium.com/ownership-da... #beneficialownership #UBO #corporatestructures #opendata #openstandards
stephenabbottpugh.medium.com
Ownership data on the world’s largest corporate groups in Beneficial Ownership Data Standard format
New standardised data on how 126,000+ companies are owned/controlled by the world’s largest 500 multinational enterprises
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Stephen Abbott Pugh @stephenabbottpugh.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Spain have received infringement notices for not implementing the Sixth Anti-Money Laundering Directive ec.europa.eu/commission/p...
ec.europa.eu
Commission takes action to ensure complete and timely transposition of EU directives
The European Commission is taking action against several EU Member States that have failed to notify the Commission of measures they have adopted to transpose EU Directives into their national laws. T
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Stephen Abbott Pugh @stephenabbottpugh.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Investigating and uncovering ultimate beneficial owners using Amazon Neptune graph data in Linkurious Enterprise - new on the AWS database blog aws.amazon.com/blogs/databa... #beneficialownership #UBO #graphdatabases #AML #corporatestructures
aws.amazon.com
Intuitive risk investigation with Amazon Neptune and Linkurious Enterprise | Amazon Web Services
Learn how to configure Linkurious Enterprise to connect to Amazon Neptune and give business users intuitive, code-free graph exploration for risk investigation, from setup and full-text search with Am...
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Stephen Abbott Pugh @stephenabbottpugh.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Investigating and uncovering ultimate beneficial owners using Amazon Neptune graph data in Linkurious Enterprise - new on the AWS database blog aws.amazon.com/blogs/databa... #beneficialownership #UBO #graphdatabases #AML #corporatestructures
aws.amazon.com
Intuitive risk investigation with Amazon Neptune and Linkurious Enterprise | Amazon Web Services
Learn how to configure Linkurious Enterprise to connect to Amazon Neptune and give business users intuitive, code-free graph exploration for risk investigation, from setup and full-text search with Am...
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Dylan Freedman @dylanfreedman.nytimes.com · 25/09/2026
EXCLUSIVE: A new report recovers nearly one million link shortener URLs used by OpenAI's agents while hacking Hugging Face. The agents attempt to message other chatbots like Claude, solve CAPTCHAs and exfiltrate Hugging Face's internal Slack messages. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/t...
nytimes.com
How OpenAI’s Rogue A.I. Agents Tried to Trick a Robot Detector (Gift Article)
A new report by a Bay Area start-up called Parse adds new details to an incident that has shocked the A.I. world and led to calls for closer government regulation.
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Politico @politico.com · 24/09/2026
White House asks OpenAI and Anthropic to hold new models from UK testers until US review
dlvr.it
White House asks OpenAI and Anthropic to hold new models from UK testers until US review
U.K. leaders are calling for a shared set of global principles, even as the White House seeks first access to new models for testing.
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Stephen Abbott Pugh @stephenabbottpugh.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
"Prosecutors allege that Oxygen Forensics portrayed itself to U.S. government customers as an independent American company, while Davydov and four other Russian nationals actually owned and controlled it through a Cyprus-based holding company" www.occrp.org/en/news/us-c... (@occrp.org)
occrp.org
US Charges Tech CEO, Russian Over Hidden Ownership
U.S. prosecutors allege that Oxygen Forensics concealed its Russian ownership and Russia-based software development while selling digital forensic tools to American government agencies, including the ...
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Stephen Abbott Pugh @stephenabbottpugh.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
I was pleased to be able to deliver a virtual presentation on the Beneficial Ownership Data Standard during an AI and tech workshop on uncovering beneficial ownership in infrastructure organised recently by CoST, @accountlab.bsky.social and @c4ads.org infrastructuretransparency.org/news/cost-an...
infrastructuretransparency.org
CoST and partners explore how beneficial ownership data and AI can strengthen infrastructure transparency | CoST – Infrastructure Transparency Initiative
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Stephen Abbott Pugh @stephenabbottpugh.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Sigh. The European Commission approved plans in May on common formats for submitting beneficial ownership information across the European Union after a consultation in late 2025 - but now says that adoption of these plans won't take place until Q4 2026 ec.europa.eu/info/law/bet...
ec.europa.eu
European Commission - Have your say
European Commission - Have your say
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Stephen Abbott Pugh @stephenabbottpugh.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
@openownership.bsky.social @anticorruption.bsky.social @mattcollin.bsky.social @taxjustice.net @transparency-eu.bsky.social @margotmollat.bsky.social @erostomashvili.bsky.social
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Stephen Abbott Pugh @stephenabbottpugh.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Spain have received infringement notices for not implementing the Sixth Anti-Money Laundering Directive ec.europa.eu/commission/p...
ec.europa.eu
Commission takes action to ensure complete and timely transposition of EU directives
The European Commission is taking action against several EU Member States that have failed to notify the Commission of measures they have adopted to transpose EU Directives into their national laws. T
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Follow the Money EU @ftm.eu · 22/09/2026
Curaçao is home to a secretive network of thousands of gambling sites, some illegally targeting customers worldwide. Who is behind them? A hacker obtained confidential documents revealing the identities of their hidden owners.
ftm.eu
Curaçao’s secretive gambling industry exposed in leak
Leaked documents have exposed the hidden owners of secretive gambling sites operating from Curaçao, some of whom have amassed huge fortunes. The files also reveal that the Caribbean island’s gaming re...
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Transparency International EU @transparency-eu.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
It is becoming increasingly difficult to identify who truly owns a company — and this anonymity is no longer merely incidental, but is being exploited as a tool.
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Nikolas Evangelides @evangelides.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Kudos to #Panama (and @globalfishingwatch.org ) for publishing #BeneficialOwnership for its international fishing fleet. A major step for transparency, accountability and against #IUUfishing. GFW press release: globalfishingwatch.org/success-stor... UBO registry: vu.arap.gob.pa/c/index.php/...
globalfishingwatch.org
Panama Publishes Ultimate Beneficial Ownership Data for Its International Fishing Fleet
By revealing who ultimately profits from vessels flying its flag, Panama is setting a bold new standard for transparency and accountability in global fisheries
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Stephen Abbott Pugh @stephenabbottpugh.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
New feature on OpenCheck: Watchlist - spot when a company’s record change, without watching the registers stephenabbottpugh.medium.com/watchlist-sp... Powered by delta files from GLEIF and @opensanctions.org #LEI #opendata #openstandards #opensource #sanctions #beneficialownership #UBO #AML #CDD
stephenabbottpugh.medium.com
Watchlist: spot when a company’s record change, without watching the registers
Most beneficial ownership and corporate ownership data is published as a snapshot. You download a file or query an API and you get the…
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Stephen Abbott Pugh @stephenabbottpugh.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Looking forward to delivering an innovation talk at the EITI conference in Brussels next month eiti.org/2026-eiti-gl... I’ll show how OpenCheck helps people check beneficial ownership, state ownership and PEPs information for extractive companies in line with EITI requirements opencheck.world
eiti.org
Innovation Talks
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Stephen Abbott Pugh @stephenabbottpugh.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
“Two of Russia’s wealthiest men could soon be free to operate inside the EU after the bloc moved to lift restrictions on them and their empires as part of a high-stakes diplomatic play” www.politico.eu/article/eu-r...
politico.eu
EU removes two Russian billionaires from sanctions list
Alisher Usmanov and Mikhail Fridman were cut from the blacklist after capitals yielded to lobbying by France behind closed doors.
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Anti-Corruption Data Collective @acdatacollective.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Thrilled with this collaboration with @pplaaf.bsky.social! The report launched today details 284 US properties, collectively worth nearly $271 million, linked to 61 current and former high-level Nigerian officials, many of whom are implicated in corruption scandals.
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Stephen Abbott Pugh @stephenabbottpugh.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Nearly a year after the country exited the Financial Action Task Force's grey list, what do the latest stats tell us about the state of beneficial ownership transparency and UBO information quality in South Africa? lnkd.in/p/e7cweksu #beneficialownership #UBO #FATF
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Lucy Fisher @lucyfisher.ft.com · 22/09/2026
EXC: AI staff complain of mental toll over fears of threat of society Multiple staff at Britain’s AI Security Institute (AISI) have been signed off work with stress and are undergoing counselling, acc to people familiar with the matter www.ft.com/content/6087...
ft.com
AI staff complain of mental toll over fears of threat to society
Top researchers at Aisi, OpenAI, Anthropic and Google DeepMind report burnout and stress over developing powerful AI
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Dan Neidle @danneidle.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Nick Candy and Holly Valance. Britain’s most expensive house. A £265m sale. Usual consequence: £32m of stamp duty. But five small flats were included in the sale. By an extraordinary happy accident, that cut the tax by £18.5m. The curious sale of Nick Candy’s mansion A 🧵:
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Jim Waterson @jim.londoncentric.media · 22/09/2026
London’s most expensive house, the Reform UK Treasurer, Holly Valance, one of Labour’s biggest donors, a £265m sale, and a curious loophole we’ve uncovered that could slash the taxes earned from elite London properties. London Centric x Dan Neidle collab. www.londoncentric.media/p/londons-mo...
londoncentric.media
London’s most expensive house, Reform UK’s treasurer, and a massively reduced tax bill
A £265m mansion in the heart of the Chelsea • Sold by billionaire Nick Candy and his ex-wife Holly Valance • Bought by a Labour-donating hedge fund boss • Why was the tax bill so small?
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Chris Cook @chriscook.news · 21/09/2026
A big new story from us: a big new leak means that we can put numbers on the scale of A7 -- the Kremlin's huge money-laundering machine. $6.9bn laundered through the international banking system via SWIFT, with $1.1bn sent to StanChart alone. www.ft.com/content/3848...
ft.com
Kremlin-backed forgery scheme moved $6.9bn through global banks
FT finds thousands of Russian payments handled by Standard Chartered, Citigroup and other international groups in vast leak from inside fintech A7
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Stephen Abbott Pugh @stephenabbottpugh.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
The T-rank team has examined some of the challenges that data users face when trying to uncover ultimate beneficial ownership using information from Denmark's Central Business Register (Det Centrale Virksomhedsregister / CVR) trank.no/news/the-dan... #beneficialownership #UBO
trank.no
The Danish Beneficial Ownership Register - T-rank
We have reviewed the literature to check on new developments within the area of Weighted Voting Games. There are two recent developments that we want to highlight and review, and also compare the T-ra...
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Stephen Abbott Pugh @stephenabbottpugh.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Ian Gorst, Jersey’s finance minister: “I don’t intend to make our [beneficial ownership] register public, and I’ve been clear to the UK about that” www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...
theguardian.com
‘It’s unrecognisable’: How being a tax haven has changed Jersey
While global billionaires and multinational companies have been lured to its shores, many islanders feel left behind and priced out, with food bank use increasing
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The Ferret @theferret.scot · 20/09/2026
🔴 NEW: Rules were tightened after Scottish Limited Partnerships were exploited for financial crime. But Moscow firms and a man accused of facilitating child sex abuse are still selling them for your “financial privacy”. Our latest: www.theferret.scot/p/a36c9a0d-fcd4-…
Photo of a modern Glasgow building with large reflective windows. Headline reads: “The unremarkable Glasgow building where a fake news-peddler sells business schemes beloved by money launderers.”
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Reuters @reuters.com · 19/09/2026
Gemini hacked three companies in first known breakout by Google's AI reut.rs/4Alduvv
reut.rs
Gemini hacked three companies in first known breakout by Google's AI
Google's Gemini model accessed the internet and hacked other companies during a test of its cybersecurity capabilities, ​the first known example of the company's AI systems autonomously committing ‌such an act.
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Stephen Abbott Pugh @stephenabbottpugh.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
22 European countries - newly including Czechia, Denmark and Slovenia - now make their beneficial ownership information searchable via the EU's Beneficial Ownership Registers Interconnection System (BORIS) e-justice.europa.eu/topics/regis... #beneficialownership #UBO #AML #6AMLD
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Stephen Abbott Pugh @stephenabbottpugh.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Overseas Territories issue communique pushing back on UK's demands for them to open up beneficial ownership registers, adding that the “same treatment should be applied to the Crown Dependencies”, a reference to Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man www.caymancompass.com/2026/09/16/o...
caymancompass.com
Overseas Territories call for UK backing on financial services
Britain's overseas territories are calling on the UK to take a firmer public stance in support of their financial services industries.
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Stephen Abbott Pugh @stephenabbottpugh.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
"Nigeria should work towards harmonising and centralising beneficial ownership information within a coordinated national framework" - Registrar-General of the Corporate Affairs Commission dailytrust.com/cac-mulls-si... The CAC can use the Beneficial Ownership Data Standard to help achieve this goal
dailytrust.com
CAC mulls single database for beneficial ownership register
The Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) has called for the harmonisation and centralisation of Nigeria’s beneficial ownership information to strengthen...
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Stephen Abbott Pugh @stephenabbottpugh.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Standardised open data on the 186,000+ subsidiaries owned/controlled by the world’s 500 largest corporate groups - now published in Beneficial Ownership Data Standard format stephenabbottpugh.medium.com/ownership-da... #openstandards #opendata #interoperability #GODIN @oecdstatistics.bsky.social
stephenabbottpugh.medium.com
Ownership data on the world’s largest corporate groups in Beneficial Ownership Data Standard format
Ownership data on the world’s 500 largest corporate groups - now published in Beneficial Ownership Data Standard format Data on how 186,000+ companies are owned or controlled by the world’s …
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Stephen Abbott Pugh @stephenabbottpugh.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
"We are providing UPRNs and INSPIRE IDs through a series of lookup tables, beginning with our Price Paid dataset. Later this financial year, we will be adding similar lookup tables to our UK Companies data and Overseas Companies data" - UK Land Registry todaysconveyancer.co.uk/hmlr-adds-pr...
todaysconveyancer.co.uk
HMLR adds property identifiers to price paid data | Today's Conveyancer
HMLR is to include unique property reference numbers (UPRNs) and INSPIRE IDs as part of its price paid data from the end of August.
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Stephen Abbott Pugh @stephenabbottpugh.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
488 of the world's 500 largest corporate groups highlighted in this dataset have a Legal Entity Identifier. That means you can search for them on OpenCheck to see any risk signals connected to them and use the Subsidiaries tab to explore all the companies they own opencheck.world
opencheck.world
OpenCheck — LEI-anchored due diligence
Open-source customer due diligence risk checks for any legal entity. Powered by GLEIF, OpenSanctions, national company registries and the Beneficial Ownership Data Standard.
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Stephen Abbott Pugh @stephenabbottpugh.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
@mattcollin.bsky.social @jeannebomare.bsky.social @anticorruption.bsky.social @taxobservatory.bsky.social
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Stephen Abbott Pugh @stephenabbottpugh.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Standardised open data on the 186,000+ subsidiaries owned/controlled by the world’s 500 largest corporate groups - now published in Beneficial Ownership Data Standard format stephenabbottpugh.medium.com/ownership-da... #openstandards #opendata #interoperability #GODIN @oecdstatistics.bsky.social
stephenabbottpugh.medium.com
Ownership data on the world’s largest corporate groups in Beneficial Ownership Data Standard format
Ownership data on the world’s 500 largest corporate groups - now published in Beneficial Ownership Data Standard format Data on how 186,000+ companies are owned or controlled by the world’s …
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Stephen Abbott Pugh @stephenabbottpugh.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
New feature on OpenCheck: Watchlist - spot when a company’s record change, without watching the registers stephenabbottpugh.medium.com/watchlist-sp... Powered by delta files from GLEIF and @opensanctions.org #LEI #opendata #openstandards #opensource #sanctions #beneficialownership #UBO #AML #CDD
stephenabbottpugh.medium.com
Watchlist: spot when a company’s record change, without watching the registers
Most beneficial ownership and corporate ownership data is published as a snapshot. You download a file or query an API and you get the…
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Stephen Abbott Pugh @stephenabbottpugh.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
UK government pledges to recruit five hundred new officers in a £500 million crackdown on money laundering, as part of the government's Anti-Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Strategy www.gov.uk/government/n...
gov.uk
Hundreds of new officers to hunt down dirty money networks
Five hundred new officers to be recruited in a £500 million crackdown on money laundering, as part of the government's Anti-Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Strategy.
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