Cyprus has recently brought into effect Article 61A (4) (a) of the Prevention and Suppression of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Law of 2007-2019, in relation to the implementation of a central register of beneficial owners of companies and other legal entities (hereinafter, the “Register”). The Registrar of Companies and Official Receiver of the Ministry of Energy, Commerce, and Industry, has been appointed by the Council of Ministers as the competent authority for collecting the necessary information and maintaining the Register. The start date of data collection is set for Monday, 18 January 2021. From this date, legal entities established in the Republic of Cyprus will be granted a period of 6 months (i.e., until 19 July 2021) by which they will need to comply with the provisions of the Law and submit the relevant information to the intermediate system of the competent authority. The information submitted shall only be made available to competent authorities upon request to the Registrar of Companies. The information submitted shall subsequently be transferred to a final system which shall be developed in the second half of 2021. To this end, legal entities are invited to start collecting information in relation to their beneficial owners, including details of the rights held by each beneficial owner, the name, the month and year of birth, the nationality, and the country of residence of the beneficial owner. Please note that in some cases such information may be held by other obliged entities, including administrative service providers, credit institutions, auditors, etc. Please note that Royal Pine & Associates may contact you in order to collect the necessary information for its submission to the competent authority. In the case of any updates from the Registrar of Companies, we shall keep you duly updated.
The author of the article is Zoe Christodoulou.
Zoe is the Risk & Compliance Officer at Royal Pine & Associates. She is a qualified lawyer with experience in the financial industry and holds the Advanced Certificate of CySEC.
* This publication has been prepared as a general guide and for information purposes only. It does not purport to be comprehensive or to render legal advice.
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