Found this article:
Boston Globe
The Federal Aviation Administration is facing the prospect of two outside reviews and a push from Congress for greater transparency after a report found that decades of lax oversight had left the United States vulnerable to drug dealers and even terrorists who seek to anonymously register planes here.
The Globe Spotlight team’s “Secrets in the sky” investigation revealed that the owners of more than 50,000 planes have used tactics that can help hide their identities in FAA registration papers, making it easier to fly anonymously. Critics warn that the United States is becoming a haven for people who want to hide their ownership of planes, including corrupt politicians and South American drug cartels.
Now, the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, is reviewing how the FAA registers planes that fly under the US flag, and two congressional committees have asked a second agency to investigate. Meanwhile, US Representatives Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts and Peter King and Carolyn Maloney, both of New York, have introduced a bill requiring the FAA to keep on file the true owners of all foreign-owned aircraft.
“There are very serious national security risks posed by the current aircraft registration system, which leaves us vulnerable to smuggling and illicit activity by criminals, and possibly terrorism,” said Lynch, who has long promoted efforts to increase corporate transparency.
FAA officials have said they are developing a plan to increase the vigilance of its Oklahoma City-based Civil Aviation Registry, which certifies and monitors more than 300,000 US-registered planes. They admit that they don’t have the resources to determine whether all the information aircraft owners provide is accurate.
But Harry Schaefer, the former director of investigative programs for the US Department of Transportation, said he was unimpressed by the FAA’s avowed commitment to tighter controls. His office has been warning about the FAA’s lack of ownership information, especially about foreign nationals, for more than a decade, he said.
“Basically, it is uncontrolled,” said Schaefer, who retired in 2006. “It’s gotten so far out of hand that they don’t know how to wrap their arms around it.”
For decades, foreign nationals have exploited loopholes in the Civil Aviation Registry to obtain coveted US plane registrations without revealing their identities. Technically, only US citizens can register a plane here, but the FAA allows foreigners to register as long as a US citizen represents them. In practice, that has allowed the names of foreign owners of aircraft to be kept out of registration papers, sometimes making it difficult to find them.
As far as law enforcement goes, bleh. USA law enforcement can already know the beneficial owner of any N-reg plane, at the worst they just have to ask the trustee. The tinfoil hat version is that they want to mine that data, NSA-style, and thus they want to have it all in one convenient database. Brave new world, end of privacy and all that.
Maybe they will change rules so that the trustee has to register the beneficial owner’s identity with the FAA… Similarly to the registry of beneficial owner of companies and trusts being put in place in the EU. The real “this will harm innocent people” question is whether the beneficial owner information will be public, or only available to the authorities.
Maybe they will change rules so that the trustee has to register the beneficial owner’s identity with the FAA
Already the case for a decade, AFAIK.
I went to an FAA presentation some 10 years ago where the above was more or less stated too. The FAA embarked on changes to make it no longer possible for trusts to conceal the real beneficial owner’s (Trustor, in US-speak) identity.
Most FAA trusts used in European light GA (like e.g. mine, done via Southern Aircraft) are not anonymous trusts, although I guess that when bizjet owners own their assets via a trust in the Cayman Islands etc they do want anonymity, and then the FAA is not going to be happy when the Trustor is a company incorporated in the Cayman Islands 
They know the company name allright but they damn well know it is concealing somebody else.
Peter wrote:
the FAA is not going to be happy when the Trustor is a company incorporated in the Cayman Islands They know the company name allright but they damn well know it is concealing somebody else.
Notwithstanding journalistic / political scaremongering, law enforcement has relatively good access to the ultimate owner of a Cayman Company, the Trustor of a Cayman Trust, etc. As soon as the company / trust has a bank account (or an account at any kind of financial institution), the bank (the financial institution) knows the ultimate owner of the company / trust, etc (bypassing any number of stacked companies and other entities). Law enforcement can just ask the bank. If the Cayman company is owned by a non-Cayman person, typically the bank account will not be in the Cayman Islands. Even if the bank account is in a Cayman bank, the Caymans Islands are, as per the FATF reports, a fully compliant jurisdiction. Which means that the local authorities will collaborate and provide the ultimate ownership information, including in prosecutions for tax fraud.
If the Trustor doesn’t have a bank account, then how does it pay the Trustee’s fees, the plane’s running costs, etc? The Trustor is not the operator? Then, the operator is probably the person you are more interested in. You really want the owner, not the operator? Then, if the Cayman company is owned by a non-Cayman person, it will typically be domiciled at a professional agent, and that professional agent has the obligation to know the ultimate owner.
Seems that the article is more about Airmen Licences than aircraft registration, the main concerns are ID theft.
Funny that their prime example was the idiot that crashed the German reg’d Learjet in Denmark and it was later learned that he had stolen the ID of an American pilot …
Reviving old thread. It appears that the US is making yet another push to ID then beneficial owners of N-re planes held in a trust. More here.
I don’t see anything new here. The FAA has been requiring trustees to disclose beneficial owner (“trustor” in US-speak) identity for more than 10 years.
However, the sort of corporate structure used for bizjets where the beneficial owner really wants to hide, can be a lot more complex than the simple trusts used for GA.
In researching a ferry US Europe I found out that US insurance carriers require the Trustee to be US domiciled. Sent a query to SAC to see if they have a workaround.
Reviving old thread. It appears that the US is making yet another push to ID then beneficial owners of N-re planes held in a trust
AFAIK, this was the case all the time that you have to disclose beneficial owners of N-reg to the trust…strictly speaking, you also need to do it even when renting or handing the keys to a friend to fly it but many don’t do it
At this seminar the FAA already required the beneficial owner details, so this is quite old.
What may be new is for cases where the operator is some Cayman Islands (etc) company, and then the trustee does not know the real owner. I doubt one of the trustees “we” use would allow that, but this is how much of the “seriously rich” business is done. Everything is hidden under layers of nominee companies etc etc.
