Since beneficial owners can participate in the management of the organization, as well as control its actions, they are the object of close attention from regulatory authorities.
For government agencies, information about the chain of beneficiaries is important for the purpose of counteracting:
legalization of funds that were obtained through criminal means or in violation of current legislation;
financing of any organizations operating in violation of the law;
carrying out financial fraud;
illegal withdrawal of monetary funds.
In Russian legislation, this concept job seekers data package is often used in the area of tax control and combating money laundering.
Federal Law No. 115 states that the responsibilities of a legal entity include identifying beneficial owners and storing information about them for five years.
In fact, disclosing beneficial owners is not always an easy task, as business ownership chains can consist of several firms.
In order to collect data on the ultimate owner of a business, it is necessary to send requests to the shareholders and founders of the company.
In our country, it has been established that information about beneficiaries does not relate to a violation of the law on personal data. If it is not possible to establish the main beneficiary, then the head of the organization may be recognized as such.
Company Director and Beneficiary
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Sometimes the ultimate owners do not want to disclose their identity, but there are situations when they are obliged to do so. All this is stipulated in Federal Law No. 115, which states that interested parties have the right to request data on beneficial owners. How does this happen:
Organizations must determine their beneficial owners independently. How to do this? You can use the Unified State Register of Legal Entities extracts or directly request data from the participants or founders of the beneficiary companies. In fact, the top management of a company almost always knows its owners.
Organizations are required to transfer information about changes in the details of their beneficial owners to all those interested in this. This requirement is stipulated in paragraph 5 of Article 6.1 of Federal Law No. 115. The data must be provided on paper and certified by a responsible person, who may be the CEO or another participant in the company.
Banks have the right to make additional requests to various funds and departments to obtain full access to information about the beneficial owners of the client’s companies.
It is important to know that disclosure of such data is not considered a violation of the law on personal data. Article 6.2 of Federal Law No. 115 states that it is the responsibility of companies to provide information about beneficiaries. It should be noted that if the authorized bodies do not request data, then it is possible not to disclose the beneficial owners.
If information about the beneficiary cannot be established by any means or methods, then this must be recorded in a special act, to which evidence of the measures taken is attached. This may be sending a letter to a shareholder or founder, a written refusal to provide data, etc. In this situation, the beneficial owner is recognized as the head of the company.
Measures to establish the identity of the beneficiary are carried out in the event that the organization does not know the ultimate beneficiary.
Information on beneficial owners must be updated at least once a year. Within five days, upon request from the Federal Tax Service or Financial Monitoring, the organization must provide the following information:
Full name, citizenship and date of birth of the beneficiary;
passport details or other identification document;
if the beneficiary is a citizen of another country, then the migration card and residence permit data are required;
registration or residence address;
Taxpayer identification number (TIN) (if available).
If the data is not provided, the company will be subject to administrative liability and fines.
The organization's website and other resources in the financial reporting section must contain information about the ultimate beneficiaries of public companies.
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