Registration of beneficial owner particulars

The 5th EU Anti-Money Laundering Directive 2018/843 of 30 May 2018 requires member states to set up centralised registers containing Beneficial Owners information of companies and other legal entities. The Republic of Cyprus transposed the above Directive into national law on 23 February 2021 (N.13(I)/2021). According to the Directive, the Registrar of Companies is designated as the competent authority for establishing and maintaining the central Register of Beneficial Owners of companies and other legal entities. The purpose of the Beneficial Owners register is the collection and storage of Beneficial Owners data of companies and other legal entities.

Beneficial owner means any natural person(s) who ultimately owns or controls a legal entity through direct or indirect ownership of a sufficient percentage of the shares or voting rights or ownership interest in that entity, including through bearer shareholdings, or through control via other means. As a result of the transposition of the 5th Directive into Cyprus Legislation, on 12.03.21, the 1st Directive of the Registrar (Κ.Δ.Π. 112/2021 as amended and in force) was issued, which governs and regulates the operation of the Beneficial Owners register. According to the Directive, the Registrar of Companies establishes, maintains and publishes exclusively in electronic form the register of Beneficial Owners of companies and other legal entities, in which information on their beneficial owners is kept.

The project is funded by the European Union through the Recovery and Resilience Plan (NextGenerationEU).

Registration of beneficial owner particulars