I really can’t see how your interest in not doing business with companies owned by people you like could possibly outweigh every business owners privacy interests.
When an individual has registered a car and is enjoying the right to operate a 6000 lbs death machine on public roads, why do they need their name hidden? What value in the society of granting them that privilege when they are enjoying legal protections and privileges not enjoyed by all members of society?
The real question you have to answer is “Why is it necessary for company ownership to be public information?”
> A service address isn't sufficient to, for example, easily piece together that one private owner has quietly purchased 70% of some town's resources, especially if they've done so via a collection of shells
What’s wrong here? Even with a perfect UBO registry that private owner could just get together with a couple of their buddies and divvy up that 70%.
What legal action are you going to take? Owning 70% of a town’s resources is generally not against the law.
Not at all. A company could be a one man shop which only does business with one other company, it’s not obvious why that would be more of a public activity than just being directly employed by a company.
People do not start companies in Dubai instead of the EU because of paperwork, Dubai is particularly paperwork heavy (especially if you need a local bank account).
More than 99% of the people whose information is listed in these registries are not corrupt public officials, Russian oligarchs, or [insert person you dislike here].
Public UBO registries do not strike a good balance between protecting the privacy of honest business owners and exposing corruption or whatever.