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UK plan for transparency of beneficial ownership

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The UK government has set out its nine-point plan for implementation of the G20/BEPS principles on transparency of beneficial ownership. This includes the UK public register of beneficial ownership from next year and new money laundering regulations to transpose the EU Fourth Anti-Money Laundering Directive into UK law during 2017. The communiqué states that the UK:

1)    has published a national risk assessment of money laundering and terrorist financing in consultation with the private sector and civil society;

2)    will ensure company law and UK money laundering regulations clearly define the criteria for ownership and control that identify a natural person as the ‘beneficial owner’ of a company;

3)    will also require companies to report ‘adequate, accurate and current’ beneficial ownership information to a central register from June 2016;

4)    will ensure trustees of express trusts obtain and hold adequate, accurate and current beneficial ownership information for their trusts, and that domestic competent authorities have access to this information;

5)    will hold in a central register the beneficial ownership information of trusts that generate tax consequences in the UK;

6)    will ensure that financial institutions and designated non-financial businesses and professions (DNFBPs) undertaking customer due diligence are able to access information held on the central register of company beneficial ownership information;

7)    will effect mechanisms to share beneficial ownership information, in line with bilateral and multilateral agreements, and work to improve international cooperation;

8)    has committed to further action to improve company transparency, and has amended company law to:

a)    prohibit UK companies from issuing bearer shares and require existing bearer shares to be surrendered and exchanged for registered shares, or cancelled and compensated; and

b)    prohibit use of corporate directors, with exceptions, and update how legal duties apply to shadow directors to align more closely with legal duties for individual directors; and

9)    has committed to consult on extending beneficial ownership transparency to foreign companies investing in high value property or bidding on UK public contracts.

See www.bit.ly/20WvUNl.

Issue: 1286
Categories: News
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