[arin-ppml] Beneficial Owners

[Ronald F. Guilmette]

I have what I think is a rather simple question.  Not a policy proposal.
Just a simple question for now, but I suspect that most or all of you
will be easily able to infer where I am going with this.

I watched a really rather interesting YouTube video recently:

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zelMqK52NRE

If you've ever taken any interest in the Panama Papers I, The Paradise
Papers, The Panama Papers II, or if you've even ever been concerned
about the activities of, say, the likes of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi or
Vladimir Putin, then I do recommend that you watch the video, which
is rather eye opening.

The video, and another small piece of information that came to me recently,
have together made me deeply curious to know whether or not ARIN, as part
of its day-to-day normal operations, requires the production of any
specific documentation of, or information about the beneficial owners of
corporate/LLC legal entities to which it assigns number resources.

Does it?  And if so, how may these records be accessed?

Certainly I've never seen any such information within any WHOIS record.
All I see there is corporate names, nominal snail-mailing addresses, and
nominal phone numbers.  I know from experience that the addresses and phone
numbers present in ARIN WHOIS records are, on many occasions, connected
only to lawyers, incorporation agents, or opaque UPS mailboxes, and obviously
this isn't the kind of information that interests me.

If ARIN routinely collects documentation of the beneficial owners of the
entities to which it assigns number resources, then I, for one, sure would
like to know how to access that.

On the other hand, if it doesn't...

Well, we'll set that aside for the moment, and I'll just wait and hope for
an answer to my basic question.

I guess that another way of stating the question is:  Is it trivially
possible for persons or entities within, say, Russia, China, Iran, or
North Korea to obtain a U.S. shell company and then proceed to leverage
that in order to obtain number resources from ARIN?


Regards,
rfg