On 25 June 2021, the German Bundesrat passed the so-called Transparency Register and Financial Information Act for the Prevention of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (Finanzinformationsgesetz zur Bekämpfung von Geldwäsche und Terrorismusfinanzierung). Its main provisions are scheduled to enter into force on 1 January 2022. Some provisions already become valid from the day after their promulgation in the Federal Law Gazette.

The law governs the transformation of the German Transparency Register from a latch (storage register), which mostly referred to other registers such as the commercial register, register of cooperatives or partnership register, into a full register in which companies are required to enter beneficial owners. For the majority of German companies, the Transparency Register itself does not yet contain a structured data record in a uniform data format.

In order to be able to uncover which natural persons are behind internationally nested corporate structures, the plan is to create a network of European transparency registers.

Please note! The registration deadlines for the new Transparency Register for companies with the previous presumption of notification (Mitteilungsfiktion) are staggered according to their legal form: companies in the form of a German public limited company (AG), European society (SE) or a German public limited partnership (KGaA) have to register by 31 March 2022; German private limited companies (GmbH), cooperatives and partnerships have to register by 30 June 2022 and all other legal forms by 31 December 2022.

Photo: Adobe Stock, joda

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