On December 21st 2020, as part of transposition into National Law of the Fourth European Directive (EU) 2015/849 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 May 2015 on the prevention of the use of the financial system for the purposes of money laundering or terrorist financing, and as per Council of Ministers’ decision it was decided to:
- Appoint the Department of Registrar of Companies and Official Receiver as the Authority responsible for the maintenance and control of the Registry of Ultimate Beneficiary Owners (UBOs) and other Legal Entities.
- Authorize the Department of Registrar of Companies and Official Receiver to collect information about the UBOs and other legal entities through the intermediate system solution that has been developed.
Based on the above, the Companies Registrar Department announces that the start date of data collection for companies is set for Monday, 18.01.2021.
From this date, the companies will be granted a period of 6 months (i.e. until 19/7/2021) for registration, of the information concerning the real beneficiaries of their legal entity in the system that has been developed. It is emphasized that the system that has been developed is an intermediate solution and access to it is possible only for the competent authorities, upon request to the Registrar of Companies.
The information collected will be transferred to the final system solution to be developed in the second half of 2021 and access to it will be based on the provisions of the 5th European Directive (EU 2018/843) of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30 May 2018 , on the prevention of the use of the financial system for the purposes of money laundering or terrorist financing.
The Companies Registrar will return in due course with more information and the relevant link for submitting this information.
For additional details the article can be found in Greek here.