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Companies must report ‘beneficial owners’ to the transparency register
An elementary building block in the fight against money laundering is to prevent straw man business. In concrete terms, this means that traders who are subject to the obligations of the Money Laundering Act must know with whom they are actually doing business. The question of the so-called beneficial owners – i.e. persons who own a company – is therefore of great importance. Since it is not always obvious, especially with complex corporate structures, who is ultimately in control of the money invested, there is a transparency register. The beneficial owners of all companies should be able to be read from this.
Until the end of July, there was a so-called notification fiction in Germany: If the information on the beneficial owners could be identified from other electronically accessible registers – for example from the commercial register – no notification to the transparency register was necessary. This has now changed. All legal entities under private law (e.g. stock corporations and GmbHs), registered partnerships (e.g. KG, GmbH & Co.KG), certain unincorporated foundations and trusts must in future actively report the beneficial owners to the transparency register, whereby there are transition periods.
An advantage for many persons obliged to under the Money Laundering Act: In future, they will generally be able to rely on the entries in the transparency register when they check the information provided by their business partners on the beneficial owner there. For registered associations, the information for the transparency register is normally taken automatically from the association register.
With the Transparency Register and Financial Information Act, further adjustments were made to the Money Laundering Act. Among other things, real estate agents must consider changes in the brokerage of rented / leased properties from a monthly net rent / lease of 10,000 euros.
Further information and transition periods
More information about the new rules is available on the website of the regional council (rp-darmstadt.hessen.de) under the keyword Money Laundering Act. Details on the legal entities subject to registration can be found in sections 20 and 23 of the Money Laundering Act (GwG), exceptions for associations in section 20a. The Federal Office of Administration is responsible for questions, but also for administrative offenses in connection with the transparency register.
The following transition periods for the registration requirement apply:
Aktiengesellschaft, SE, partnership limited by shares
March 31, 2022
GmbH, (European) cooperative or partnership
30. June 2022
In all other cases
31. Dec. 2022
(Text: PM RP Darmstadt)
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