 So, thank you. I'm excited to present joint work with Diego Zamiasi at Newcastle University, and this is a project that was funded by the Revenues for Development Initiative at Unwider. So we're staying offshore. In two ways, we're talking about offshore oil and offshore finance, by companies and oil licenses. So according to a report, the OECD in 2014, about one-fifth or about 19% of foreign bribery is concentrated in the extractive sector. And then if we look deeper into cases of corruption, let's look, for example, at this report that was published by the Natural Resources Governance Initiative, then they looked deeply at 28 cases of corruption. And they found that shell companies were involved in about eight cases of these 28, so about a third of them. So we got a little bit like, what's happening here? Why do shell companies play such a role? And can they work as a red flag to just stick with the title that they gave on corruption happening in this sector? So the question we asked is, does the award of oil and gas licenses create opportunities for corruption? So we're zooming here on a particular moment of the whole production and exploration process of oil. And we're looking at the moment when all permits are actually being awarded. So why this is the case? Why could there be a link to corruption? Well, there are large investments that are required to gain oil licenses, but also to be able to extract oil. And that's also why there's a need of a large infrastructure and large investments. But the gains that can be obtained are also very high. At the same time, typically, and this I didn't know before starting this project, and then I got the opportunity to dig in a bit deeper. And the oil licensee are typically given out through different procedures. Some of them are direct negotiations. Other are licensing rounds. And in these licensing rounds, typically ministries or public figures, they do play a role. And so typically, they also own large discretion in this process. So which kinds of licenses are we talking about here? So we're going to focus on this study on two types of licenses. And those are exploration and production licenses. So exploration licenses, as the name says, they are usually awarding the right to explore a typically a block or an area. And they typically last between five to 10 years. So we have a suspect that there may be oil there. And so we're going to explore the area. By production licenses, as the name says, they instead like there has already been a discovery. And so we're gaining the right to produce oil and probably trade it commercially. And they last for a longer time period. But the thing is that production licenses are typically awarded and oftentimes they are awarded after a discovery has happened. And sometimes owning an exploration license is a prerequisite for participating in a licensing round for production license. So as a result, it turns out that exploration licenses are oftentimes more valuable in terms of what can come out or if we think about the flow of returns that could happen in the future. So going back to the question we started with is does the award of oil and gas licenses create opportunities for corruption? Then putting together what we said so far is that there are large rents at stake and there is high discretion of public figures that are involved in this process. So the risk of corruption is pretty high. And then going back to the title again of offshore finance, why would the shared companies play a role in this? And for now, I'm just going to mention some cases that were brought up, brought about from the press or from the work as an investigative journalist as the ICIJ did or from justice courts. So let's think to just here, I'm just going to mention three cases and as an example. So let's think that maybe some politically connected individuals, they won again the right for the exploration license and then make profits by reselling it later. So of course, they cannot participate directly in the awarding round, but what they could potentially do is set up a shared company of which like they are the owner of the beneficiary behind it and then let the shared company participate in the licensing round. Another case could be, for example, that companies actually may be interested in bribing the public figures so to gain advantage and probably gain a higher chance to obtain the license. And in that case, maybe they cannot probably channel the bribes directly to the public figure. So what they could do is set up a shared company of which the public figure could be somehow linked to the ultimate beneficiary and therefore channel the funds through the shared company. Lastly, another case could be, for example, that typically when there is an award of a license, then there is also a sign in bonus that comes with it and it should end in the government coffers. But there have been cases in which some of those funds that should be part of the revenues of the countries are siphoned off to the personal accounts of public figures. And typically the way this is done or in some cases the way this has been done is through channeling the funds to a shared company that is tied again to the public figure. So going back to what has been said, for example, in the panel this morning, we started looking for patterns in data. And what we have done, we have plotted the three series here. So the bottom series here is the number of awards. It could be like exploration licenses or production licenses that have been awarded throughout time. Then the series in the middle, the blue line, is the price, the oil price. And the last one on top is the number of shared companies that have been opened through time. What this picture suggests is that the three series do seem to move together over time. So the number of awards, the bottom series, moves very closely or at least similarly in pattern to the top series which is the number of new shared companies that have been opened over time. So to sum up so far, then going back to the question, does the award of oil and gas licenses create opportunities for corruption? Well, looking just at the patterns of the time series, there seem to be a relationship if we agree to think that shared companies may act as an indicator of corruption. So just to give out the results of the study and then we're going to dig in it more later, what we do find is that in the period around the award of an exploration license, the number of shared companies increases by 11%. And this relationship holds even stronger when there is an oil boom. So when the price of oil is increasing, meaning that the revenues from oil are also bigger in that period. So how do we do this in the end? So first of all, we get data on oil licensing rounds. So thanks to the contribution of UniWider, we actually were able to purchase data from a business intelligence provider that actually gains information on licensing rounds and actually its customers are oil companies. So it's just to give out information when an oil licensing round is happening so that oil companies could take part in it. So we purchased that information and we had information on the different locations of the oil blocks, the date at which the award would happen, and the type of award. So whether it would be an exploration or a production license. And we had the information on about 6,300 of awards across 130 countries, more or less, for a 25-year spend, between 1990 and 2014. And then we looked at the other side. So we had information on the awarding rounds. We needed information on shell companies. So we actually made use of the work that ICIJ did. And we looked deeper into the shell companies that the data said that they put together through the different leaks. So the Panama Papers, the Pandora Papers and Paradise Papers. So this whole database has information on shell companies that have been opened throughout between like 1990 and 2014. Actually the data goes back also in time for the 70s, but let's say we have a reliable amount of information starting from the 90s. And for a third of this company we can link them to a specific country. So on one side we have information on the awards, when the licensing rounds are being awarded and where. On the other side, for a subgroup of these shell companies, we have information on when they were opened, and from which country they were opened. So from there, we started our estimation. So we said, let's look at a specific country, and then let's look at the average number of shell companies that this country is incorporated in a specific month. Then let's focus on the six months that are around the timing of the awarding of an oil round. So being it either exploration or production license. And then let's compare what the trend in shell companies is going in this period, is looking like in this period. What around this six months interval is changing compared to what it is typically when there is no award. And just to make sure that we're not capturing a trend in the country, let's compare it to another country that in the same calendar month is not awarding anything. So in the end we're asking, is there a change in the number of shell companies that are being incorporated in the six months interval around the awarding of an oil license? Well the hypothesis we test is that if corruption or if we believe that shell companies are actually capturing some corruption, then we should expect a larger increase in the number of newly incorporated shell companies during the awarding period. And when there is a noise shock, so when the price of oil is actually increasing and so oil is becoming even more profitable, well then there should be even higher scope of rents and revenues. So there could be an even higher increase in the number of shell companies, because this opportunity to capture rent is even higher when the oil price is even increasing. So the finding that we have is actually synthesized in this figure. And what, so the three different markers, they just show the result of our estimation for three different subsets. So the first one is putting together the awarding is looking at how the shell companies are changing around any awarding period. And what we see is that given that the bar is crossing the zero line is saying, well, there does seem to be a small change, but it's not really statistically significant. The second one is instead focusing on the awarding of exploration licensing. And what this is saying is that when in the six months around the world of an exploration license, there is an increase of about 11% in the shell companies that are being incorporated by that country. The last one is instead on production license and then it's just saying, well, there doesn't seem to be an effect when a production license is awarded. And this comes back to our interpretation that probably to have a production license, you firstly need to have an exploration license. So the game has already been played by that time. And finally, what this is saying is, okay, the second hypothesis we're testing is whether one oil becomes even more profitable, meaning the oil price is increasing, whether this mechanism is even more likely to occur. And this is what the numbers in a rectangular are saying. So the coefficients are positive and statistically significant, saying that even more, not only when the award is being given out, there is an increase in shell companies, but this increases even farther when oil is more profitable. Okay, so to conclude, so we started by saying that the OSCD estimated that about a fifth of transnational bribes are concentrated in the extractive sector. And we have been talking since yesterday and we will be talking also in the next part of the day and hopefully also in the future, how this could be also a curse for some countries as it's lowering down the pace of growth and also exacerbating inequality. So we need a response by institution and policymakers. And what we have been saying even in the panel this morning was a word that like we need to make them accountable. And a way to make that those accountable or the government accountable is first to be informed. And so to make use of information that's being given out there and that allows us to see what's happening but also to call for more transparency in the awarding procedures. So to know who the players are and to know who's behind shell companies when they are being open. So this is all I have and thank you.