Press release

On 7 November 2017 the amendments to the Law on the Prevention of Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing came into force, which determined to the legal persons to disclose their beneficial owners to the Register of Enterprises.

The Law provided for a possibility not to turn with a separate application to the Register of Enterprises only in exceptional cases, namely, when the information about beneficial owners - always natural persons, was already publicly available in the context of obligations determined by other regulatory enactments.

The activity with submission of information to the Register of Enterprises is to be assessed as satisfactory for legal persons, which have to mandatory perform the requirement of law. As an exception, particularly inactive ones are the limited liability companies, where foreign companies constitute 100% of shareholders. Right such legal persons have high risk degree in terms of use for criminal purposes[1], which is confirmed also by the  MONEYVAL  assessment report regarding the entrepreneurship environment in Latvia, therefore we recommend companies to perform the duty determined to them by law - to disclose their beneficial owners without delay.

We would like to draw the attention that in case if beneficial owners will not be disclosed according to requirements, the operation of the company will be terminated in accordance with the procedure laid down by regulatory enactments! Besides, we would like to warn that non-existence of information on beneficial owners in the registers maintained by the Register of Enterprises may serve as a ground for more strict examinations during the process of customer study from the part of subjects of the Law - such as, the bank, outsourcing accountants, sworn notaries and other service providers and may serve as a ground for refusal to cooperate with the relevant customer!

More detailed information about “Amendments to the Law On Prevention of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing” on the website of the Register of Enterprises.