THAT a company can conceal who really owns it is a longstanding privilege in many countries. This is not just convenient for the shareholders. It makes money for the authorities that register such firms and for the lawyers who handle the details.

But it incenses crimefighters and sleazebusters. A World Bank report last year, “The Puppet Masters”, investigated 150 big corruption cases. Almost all involved the misuse of corporate vehicles, such as companies and trusts, to the tune of $50 billion. The Obama Administration's action plan for open government calls for “meaningful” information about beneficial ownership to be recorded at the time of incorporation. Britain's Financial Services Authority says concealed ownership is a big feature of money-laundering.

The improvements that the World Bank and other official bodies want are modest: corporate registries should make up-to-date details of a company's name, address and directors publicly available. They should keep track of its real beneficial ownership and share that data with law-enforcement officials when needed.

Yet change of any kind is painfully slow. In America anonymously owned companies have featured prominently in recent scandals about campaign financing and health-care fraud. Despite that, a bill by Senator Carl Levin to require American companies to declare their beneficial ownership (if only to officials) has stalled in the Senate's finance committee. Some suspect that pressure from states that thrive on providing anonymity, such as Delaware, helps keep the bill in limbo.

For those wanting more radical change, such as the public disclosure of beneficial ownership, the picture is even gloomier. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the world's main anti-money-laundering body, is revamping a set of 40 recommendations to tighten rules on everything from tax dodging to terrorist financing. But reaching agreement on changes to ownership rules was particularly tricky and progress has been modest. Anthea Lawson of Global Witness, a campaigning group, says that the result is “carte blanche for tax-evaders, organised crime and the corrupt to carry on business as usual.”

Some dispute that any real change is needed. Jurisdictions such as the British Virgin Islands may keep ownership information out of the public gaze, but insist they co-operate readily with requests from law-enforcement bodies. Companies that buy mineral rights say that anonymous front companies are a vital part of their strategy when haggling with landowners. Countries with a common-law tradition, such as Britain, flinch at the idea of a central register of trusts, which a real reform would necessitate. The government wants to cut regulation, not increase it. Britain also still allows “bearer shares”: certificates that give control of a company to whoever has the paper in their hands at a particular moment. Other countries find such loopholes scandalous.

Not my job

A second problem is about who in practice should tighten the rules. Relying on law-enforcement has only limited success because police are too busy, and budgets too stretched, to follow paper trails that may involve scores of companies and trusts in dozens of jurisdictions. By the end, the miscreants have long vanished. Corporate registries say they cannot take on more duties: their job is collecting documents, not checking them. Banks want someone else to do the work. A spokesman for the British Bankers' Association complains that his members “are placed under obligations but less thought is given to where banks can find authoritative information to abide by those obligations”. One idea is to ask the customer, and to turn down any who cannot explain themselves. Even that would be an improvement—but how can banks check what clients say is true?

The results of the FATF talks will be published next month. Officials insist that it will now place greater expectations on members. One shift is towards identifying real rather than merely legal ownership (with nominee shareholders and directors, a company may take instructions from a shadowy third party). All those involved in due diligence will be expected to take a “risk-based” approach and “reasonable” measures (translation: more commonsense, less box-ticking). Signatory states will come under closer scrutiny on issues such as keeping timely, accurate, accessible basic information (such as company addresses). And they will be obliged to have some penalties for non-compliance.

The wheels will grind on: FATF will evaluate progress (more rigorously, it says) and name and shame laggards. The European Union will shortly start work on a new anti-money-laundering directive, its fourth and toughest to date. But for the time being, self-interest has trumped efforts to clean up company law.