Rachel Owens is the Head of the EU Office of Global Witness an anti-corruption, human rights and environmental NGO. In 2017, she set up Global Witness’ first EU office based in Brussels leading and working on campaigns to introduce EU rules for mandatory investor due diligence, to crackdown on corruption in EU golden visa schemes and to increase transparency of company ownership through the EU anti-money laundering rules. She was previously Campaign Leader of Global Witness’ campaign to tackle corruption in the oil, gas and mining sectors leading a campaign to bring in new beneficial ownership rules for all 52 countries that are part of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI). Before joining Global Witness, she was Chief of Staff to Arlene McCarthy, former Vice-President of the European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs committee leading legislative work on financial services policy including reform of EU market abuse rules, capital markets reform and bankers bonuses.
