Needless to say, this analysis would not have been possible had the French government not made and maintained company and real estate ownership data freely available. But authorities still have a lot of work to do to unlock the potential of these powerful transparency tools.

As a matter of urgency, French authorities need to raise compliance rates with beneficial ownership disclosure rules. Companies that are in breach of their obligations must be sanctioned. Authorities also need to put in place a robust verification mechanism to improve data collection and validation in order to detect misleading or incorrect filings. The types of companies that are particularly at risk of money laundering – such as SCIs – should be subjected to enhanced checks.

When it comes to real estate, French authorities should start by requiring foreign companies that own or wish to invest in the French real estate sector to disclose their beneficial owners. Guidelines for real estate professionals and compliance checks of agents in critical regions should also be strengthened.

Finally, the French authorities themselves should make better use of available databases like the beneficial ownership data in order to continuously analyse and assess the specific risks of money laundering in the real estate sector – just as we have done together with Transparency International France and ACDC.

In fact, ahead of publication, we shared our findings with the French authorities, who then undertook an analysis of their own to respond to our request. Their findings were slightly different; for example, they arrived at an overall beneficial ownership disclosure rate of 83 per cent, which according to our research, is at 61 per cent. We were unable to independently verify the government’s figures, so authorities should try to understand where the discrepancies come from.