Article 30 of the Directive (EU) 2015/849 of 20 May 2015 on the prevention of the use of the financial system for the purposes of money laundering or terrorist financing (the “AML 4th Directive”), which requires corporate and other legal entities incorporated within an EU Member State to obtain and hold adequate, accurate and current information on their beneficial owners, including details of the beneficial interests and to establish a central register of beneficial ownership information (“BO”), has been transposed in Luxembourg with the law of January 13th 2019 (the “RBO Law”), which will come into force on March 1st 2019. The RBO law provides for a six months’ grace period which will end on September 1st 2019.
The RBO Law is intended to apply to all entities registered with the Luxembourg register of commerce and companies, including civil and commercial companies, branches of foreign companies, interest groupings (groupements d’intérêt économique - GIE), European interest groupings (groupements européens d’intérêt économique - GEIE), investment funds (fonds d’investissement), all mutual funds (fonds communs de placement - FCPs), non-profit associations (associations sans but lucratif); foundations (fondations); pension savings associations (associations d’épargnes pensions); etc. Listed companies are not outside the scope of the RBO Law but shall be subject to a more flexible regime.
Alongside the rules regarding the definition of a BO and the data to be filed with the register of BO, the RBO law provides for specific rules regarding access to the captioned data in the register considering the particular nature thereof as well as sanctions in case of non-compliance with the RBO Law.
For more information on the RBO Law, the obligations it imposes and the penalties for non-compliance, we refer you to our legal alert published earlier this month.
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