In the context of transposing the Directive (EU) 2015/849 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 May 2015, which relates to the prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing, into the national law of the Republic of Cyprus, Section 61A(4)(a) of the “Prevention and Suppression of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Law of 2007 (188(I)/2007)” provides for the maintenance of a central registry holding information in relation to the beneficial owners of companies and other legal entities.

Thus, the Cyprus Council of Ministers appointed the Registrar of Companies (ROC) as the competent authority to keep the said registry. Note that the ROC has already proceeded with a temporary system for this purpose and it will soon get activated. ROC announced that on Monday, the 18^th of January 2021, the data collection for the UBOs will start. From that date, the companies will have a period of 6 months (until 19 July 2021), to register all requested information about the UBOs. Access to the system is only available to competent authorities upon request from ROC. All the information will be collected and transferred to the final version of the system on the 2^nd half of 2021.