September 2019 – UBO registry

More than 5 years after the introduction of the UBO registry by the Fourth Money Laundering Directive (EU 2015/849) or “MLD4”, 2 years after the adoption of the coresponding Belgian Money Laundering Act and after two consecutive postponements of the effective date, all Belgian corporate entities and other Belgian legal entities will be obliged to identify their UBOs and upload the required information in the Belgian UBO-Register by 30 September 2019.

While the information obligations of the UBO apply directly to companies and legal entities, it should be noted that the company’s directors may be held liable up to considerable amounts.

Please note while listed companies are excluded to identify their UBO’s in accordance with a recently updated FAQ of the Belgian administration, this exclusion importantly does not apply to daughter companies which are directly or indirectly held by such listed companies with less than 100% of the total shareholding.

Our firm is advising on all UBO matters, and also acts as a representative for companies in timely obtaining all UBO related information, identifying the UBO’s, completing the register as proxyholder and keeping it regularily updated.