The Fisheries and Aquaculture Ministry has announced a strong commitment to revealing the beneficial owners and who ultimately profits from activities of fishing vessels in the country’s territorial waters.
Sector minister Emelia Arthur, who was speaking at the 2025 UN Ocean Conference in France, says the measure is a critical step toward ending illegal fishing, human rights abuses and other crimes at sea.
The conference, which was hosted by the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF), brought together senior fisheries sector ministers from several nations; including officials from France, Ghana, Maldives, Liberia, Panama and the European Commission.
A research published by the EJF in July 2020 indicates that fishing vessels are increasingly used to facilitate illegal fishing; forced, bonded and slave labor; and trafficking of people, drugs and wildlife.
However, the individuals ultimately profiting from these activities remain hidden behind opaque ownership structures, shell corporations and complex financial secrecy arrangements.
Speaking at the Conference, Madam Arthur further emphasized that the ocean has become a space where illegality thrives unchecked and the true perpetrators often remain hidden.
“That is why beneficial ownership transparency – knowing who actually controls and benefits from a vessel or company – is essential. Without it, enforcement is a guessing game. With it, we can follow the money, close loopholes and hold the right people accountable. The government of Ghana is committed to sealing these loopholes,” she noted.
With West Africa losing an estimated US$9.4billion annually to illegal fishing, the minister called for urgent reforms in transparency, vessel ownership disclosures and global cooperation.
Indeed, the EJF disclosed that around 90 percent of Ghana’s industrial trawl fleet is linked to Chinese ownership – as these operators work through Ghanaian ‘front’ companies, using opaque corporate structures to import their vessels and register and obtain a license.
These phenomena contradict the existing law which forbids foreign ownership of industrial trawl vessels operating under the Ghanaian flag; both in terms of ownership on paper and, crucially, in terms of those who profit from the vessel – known as the ‘beneficial owners’.
At the Conference, EJF’s CEO Steve Trent said: “Transparency in beneficial ownership is the leveraging of justice, sustainability and security. It empowers coastal states to enforce their laws; it protects honest fishers from unfair competition and it gives consumers the confidence that the fish they eat was not caught illegally and unsustainably, stolen from coastal communities or fished by forced, bonded or slave labor”.
