Cyprus Implements Ultimate Beneficial Owner Register for Companies

08/01/2021

On 16 December 2020, the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Cyprus took some decisions related to the implementation of the provisions of the 4^th EU AML Directive (EU 2015/849) for what concerns the creation of a register for the Ultimate Beneficial Owners (UBOs) of companies and other legal entities in Cyprus (the “Register”). In particular, it was decided to:  

• appoint the Registrar of Companies as the competent authority for the maintenance of the Register; and
• authorise the Registrar of Companies, to collect information about the UBOs based on an intermediate solution, which has been put in place.

Following the above, the Registrar of Companies announced on 21 December 2020 that the collection of data will begin on Monday 18 January 2021.  Companies will be granted a period of 6 months in order to comply.

Access to the Register, during this intermediate stage, is only available to competent authorities upon request to the Registrar of Companies. Therefore, information in the Register will not be publicly available.

At the final stage the information collected will be transferred to a platform to be developed in the second half of 2021. Access to that platform will be based on the provisions of the 5th EU AML Directive (EU 2018/843).