Document Type : Original Article

Authors

• firooz sokouti ¹
• seyed mohmmad asadinezhah ¹
• Akbar Imanpor ²

¹ University of Guilan

² Ubiversity of Guilan

Abstract

Corporate transparency refers to the need to identify the identity of the beneficiaries of commercial companies. The question is, despite the fact that a commercial company has a legal personality, is there a need to identify the company's beneficiaries? Economists believe that secure privacy will lead to economic efficiency, but such a function can lead to abuse of the legal personality of the company. In American law, the Corporate Transparency Act requires commercial companies to provide the government with the details of the company's beneficiaries, but this information is not made available to the public. In this system, secrecy has replaced confidentiality, respecting the privacy of individuals. The Iranian legislator has declared information related to commercial companies as non-confidential in the new Commercial Law bill, disregarding the privacy of the company's beneficiaries. On the other hand, in Iranian law, the legislator's main attention in the issue of corporate transparency has been on the management bodies and founders of the company, and not the real beneficiaries. This article, using a descriptive and analytical method, concludes that corporate transparency prevents the activities of shell companies and prevents individuals from using the legal personality of the company to carry out illegal activities.

Keywords

• Privacy
• corporate transparency
• shell company
• anonymous company
• Effective ownership