According to the European Commission’s Fourth European Anti-Money Laundering Directive (AMLD), all EU member states must establish a public Ultimate Beneficial Ownership (UBO) register. With the aim of exposing the anonymous nature of companies and other companies and thus combating financial crimes such as money laundering, tax evasion and corruption. Despite these European regulations, it turned out last year that 63% of the member states do not yet have a centralized register. Now, three years after the rule came into effect, the UBO Atlas provides an overview of the current state of affairs with regard to the disclosure of UBO registers in member states. With this we give everyone the opportunity to take stock themselves: which countries give access to the registers of ultimate beneficial owners and which do not (yet)?
The UBO Atlas
Three years after the adoption of the fifth anti-money laundering directive and one year after the deadline for Member States to install and open the registers of beneficial owners, the UBO Atlas provides a picture of the current state of affairs in the European Union. The atlas shows the specific aspects of the implementation and accessibility of beneficial ownership registers in the EU Member States. This makes it possible to distinguish between different aspects of the UBO register and its implementation: such as who has access to the register in a country, whether a paywall has been set up and whether the data is structured and available in a machine readable format. For example, a country may have established a central register, but data is not freely available because data has to be paid for and is not published in an open data format, as in the Netherlands.
The UBO Atlas builds on research conducted by Transparency International. More details about these ultimate beneficiaries will be added to the UBO Atlas over the coming months.
Go to uboatlas.eu and compare Ultimate Beneficial Ownership Registries between EU Member States now!