Charmian Gooch

In 2014, Gooch's lobbying for eliminating anonymous companies resulted in two key committees of the European Parliament voting to do the same. The European Union agreed to create public registries detailing who owns and controls companies and trusts registered in the EU.

In 2014, Gooch and her Global Witness co-founders Alley and Taylor received the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship from the Skoll Foundation because of their "quest to expose corruption, conflict, and environmental degradation," which involves putting an end to the "resource course that has kept millions of the world's poorest people in poverty." The award consists of $1.25 million and is given to "transformative leaders who are disrupting the status quo, driving large-scale change, and are poised to make an even greater impact on the world."

The evidence Gooch and Global Witness managed to obtain was compiled into a report called Forest, Famine, and War – The Key to Cambodia's Future, which was published in March 1995. Subsequently, the report received widespread press coverage around the world and was widely distributed among delegates of donor countries to Cambodia, as well as various non-governmental organisations and multi-lateral donor agencies. The international pressure that followed as a result of the report forced Cambodia to introduce a timber export ban in May 1995 that significantly reduced Thai trading with the Khmer Rouge and effectively closed the Cambodian border to further Thai timber imports.

In 2013, Gooch's movement progressed further when the UK government made the issue of anonymous companies the central focus of its G8 presidency and committed to "ending anonymous companies by publishing information on the ultimate, beneficial owners of British companies." On 31 October, UK Prime Minister at the time David Cameron attended the Open Government Partnership conference in London and took to the stage to announce that he was going to "introduce legislation requiring all companies based in Britain to disclose who their ultimate owners are in a publicly accessible registry."

To address this challenge, in 2010 Gooch and Global Witness began work with a coalition of non-governmental organisations committed to forcing companies to identify "their ultimate, or beneficial, owners." The coalition has engaged in lobbying of policymakers in Washington, London, and Brussels, calling for "governments to create public registries of the real owners of companies and trusts so that law enforcement, businesses, NGOs, and ordinary citizens know who they're dealing with."

Efforts by Gooch and her allies aimed at encouraging members of the G8 to be more transparent were successful when the US Congress passed a piece of legislation in July 2010 known as the Dodd – Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which was designed to decrease various risks in the US financial system.

Gooch's work in dealing with anonymous companies led to changes in legislation that allowed for the proper identification of company owners. As a result, two-thirds of worldwide oil, gas, and mining revenues are covered by transparency laws. In 2010, the US passed the Dodd – Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which allowed for greater transparency in regards to US company owners. In 2013, the UK government committed to ending anonymity by making information available about the beneficiaries and owners of British organisations in a register open to the public. The European Union also followed in the same manner as the British government and voted in favour of having public registries.

Gooch's work with Global Witness in exposing the conflict diamond trade was the inspiration for the 2006 film Blood Diamond. The film highlights some of the key events that Global Witness was a part of, such as the 1998 report and the creation of the Kimberley Process.

In 2005, Gooch and Global Witness discovered that China had been importing up to "1.3 million cubic meters of timber from Burma per year and that around 98% of this trade was illegal." The evidence published in the consequent Global Witness report generated an international outcry that prompted the Chinese government to "close its land border to timber from Burma in early 2006."

In 2005, Gooch and her Global Witness co-founders Patrick Alley and Simon Taylor received the Gleitsman International Activist Award from the Harvard Kennedy School. The award was created in 1993 by Alan Greitsman to "honor leadership in social activism that has improved the quality of life in countries and inspired others to do the same." Gooch and her colleagues were honorees of the award along with Han Dongfang, international advocate of the worker's movement in China. They received $125,000 and a "specially commissioned sculpture designed by Maya Lin, the creator of the Vietnam War Memorial."

Gooch's efforts helped Global Witness become the first organisation to bring the world's attention to the issue of conflict diamonds. As a result of their findings, a government-led certification scheme known as the Kimberley Process was set up in 2003 in an effort to reduce the trade of conflict diamonds. It requires member states to "set up an import and export control system" in which rough diamonds are tracked from the mines to the jewellers.

In 2003, they worked with the LA Times to reveal that Riggs Bank in Washington, DC held millions of dollars worth of oil revenues for Equatorial Guinea's president Teodoro Obiang. The subsequent investigation performed by a Senate committee found the bank was indeed engaging in money-laundering, resulting in a fine of $25 million as well as the eventual selling off of the company "at a fraction of its value."

In 2001, Gooch and Global Witness investigated a logging deal between the Zimbabwean Forestry Commission and the DRC government. Their work revealed that the deal had ties to the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front and would result in the destruction of a forest area comparable to the size of the UK As a result of their investigation, the deal was immediately halted.

Gooch and Global Witness compiled all of the evidence they had collected into a report entitled "A Rough Trade," which was published and released in 1998. Exposing the role of diamonds in funding the civil war in Angola, the report also revealed the secretive practices of the global diamond industry for the first time. It illustrated how over a six-year period, UNITA was able to purchase arms by generating $3.7 billion from the sale of diamonds. This prompted governments and other entities in the diamond industry to take action to remove "conflict diamonds" from the global marketplace.

In 1997, Gooch travelled to Angola to investigate how militants were mining diamonds to prolong a civil war that had started in the 1970s. She shoved a would-be-mugger down a flight of stairs while gathering information about the diamond supply chain from government officials and businessmen in the Angolan capital of Luanda and in the diamond-trading centre of Antwerp, Belgium, earning her a reputation for toughness.

Gooch and Global Witness's campaign to combat blood diamonds that started in 1997 subsequently led to their nomination for the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize. The award that year was awarded to Iranian human rights activist Shirin Ebadi.

In January and February 1995, Gooch and Global Witness undertook an investigation regarding the illegal trade of timber in both Thailand and Cambodia, which was largely responsible for funding the civil war in Cambodia. Posing as timber buyers, Gooch and her team visited logging camps to study how a Cambodian communist insurgency known as the Khmer Rouge was "collaborating with Thai interests to cut down hardwood forests in violation of a United Nations ban."

Gooch co-founded Global Witness in 1993 with Taylor and Alley to expose the "nexus of corruption, natural resources, and conflict". They created Global Witness due to the "looting of entire countries," which they saw as a human rights issue.

In the late 1990s, the sale of diamonds to fund wars in countries such as Angola, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Sierra Leone had resulted in the death and displacement of millions of people.

Her work with Global Witness in the late 1990s exposed how the blood diamond trade was responsible for funding wars and conflicts around the world. It led to the creation of a report in 1998 called "A Rough Trade," which exposed the "illegal export from war-torn African countries of diamonds that bankrolled rebel groups notorious for mass rape and cutting off hands." By uncovering the role that companies and governments played in the trade, Gooch and Global Witness were influential in establishing the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme in 2003, which is an international agreement designed to prevent the trade of conflict diamonds by tracking diamonds from the mines to the jewellers. The 2006 film Blood Diamond was based partly off Gooch's work.

In 1987, Gooch graduated from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, where she studied history and immediately pursued to look for a job after graduation. Gooch's first professional position was as a researcher at the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), a non-governmental organisation that was based out of London and focused on exposing polluters and poachers. It was a branch of Greenpeace that "conducted undercover investigations into environmental crime." At 22 years of age, Gooch participated in the investigation of the illegal trade in African ivory.

Charmian Penelope Gooch (born 1965) is a British anti-corruption campaigner and activist. She is a co-founder and board member of the NGO Global Witness, where she works to uncover and fight corruption in the developing world.

Born in 1965, Gooch is a self-confessed "lifelong troublemaker." She grew up in London and was taught by her parents to question authority. She has had an interest in environmental issues ever since she was a child, which carried on into her later years as a university graduate.