The hidden face of Patrick Hansen, the man who rolled back financial transparency in Europe

Just three months ago, the Luxembourger Patrick Hansen was a successful entrepreneur hailed by business circles, whose notoriety stopped at the gates of his country. But in November 2022, this CEO of one of the world’s largest private jet companies, Luxaviation, also made a name for himself on the European scene: he became the man behind the court decision. which has declared illegal the general public’s access to the registers of beneficial owners of companies, in the name of respect for privacy.

Patrick Hansen is one of two plaintiffs from the Grand Duchy who had taken legal action to prevent the public disclosure of their name in the Luxembourg commercial register, which a 2018 European directive required in the name of financial transparency and transparency. fight against money laundering and tax evasion. The case went all the way to the Court of Justice of the European Union: by ruling in their favor on November 22, 2022, and ruling that these registers infringed privacy, the supreme court was strongly criticized for having endorsed a decline in transparency.

The ability of NGOs and journalists to investigate shell companies, and to reveal financial scandals like the “Panama Papers” in 2016, was de facto burdened. Part of Europe was immediately plunged into darkness: the public consultation of many European registers was suspended, uncertainty still remains today about the conditions for their reopening.

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Linked to 117 companies

Faced with the impact of such a decision and the extraordinary “butterfly effect” aroused by the complaint of this Luxembourg entrepreneur, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), an investigation platform partner of the World, at the forefront of corruption, set out to investigate Mr. Hansen’s motives. To justify his complaint, the CEO of Luxaviation said he feared for his safety and feared being kidnapped if the public were to consult his data and find out which companies he owned. Yet, wasn’t his company – a Luxembourg flagship with offices all over the world, from Cape Town to Dubai via Miami – already in the public square, known to all and subject to the rules of market transparency? Wasn’t Mr. Hansen himself active on social media? What companies was he talking about? What major interest did he have in keeping the secret?

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