In mid-November 2021, the Malta Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit (FIAU) issued a Guide clarifying the procedure for identifying the beneficiary of a trust or foundation.
The updated Guide clarifies that now the recommended procedure is not only to identify all beneficiaries of a trust in accordance with the definition of “beneficial owner” of a trust, which also includes trustees and protectors. Under the new rules, the person in charge must first establish who the actual beneficiary of the trust is. It is then necessary to consider whether the conditions are sufficient for the beneficiary to also be considered the beneficial owner of the company, ultimately entitled to 25% or more of the shares or more than 25% of the voting rights.
The amendments regarding the founders, protectors and trustees of companies were mainly based on the comments contained in the report of the second round of peer review on Malta by the OECD Global Forum on Transparency and Information Exchange for Tax Purposes. The amendments also apply to cases where customers are government organizations. In addition, the amendments relate to keeping the information up to date, imposing a direct obligation on regulated entities to “inquire from time to time whether the beneficial ownership information obtained during the initial entry in the register is still up to date or not”.
Recall that the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is an international economic organization of developed countries that recognize the principles of representative democracy and a free market economy. In January 2014, OECD Secretary General Jose Angel Gurria said that if all the necessary conditions are met, Russia could join the organization as early as 2015. However, on March 13, 2014, the OECD suspended Russia's membership for an indefinite period due to the annexation of Crimea and the crisis in eastern Ukraine. At the same time, the British weekly The Economist expressed an opinion about the undesirability of admitting Russia to the OECD as long as the anti-Western orientation of the Kremlin's policy continues.
