Legislation setting up a registry of company’s beneficial owners will be published in the coming weeks, Finance Minister Edward Scicluna said today.
The registry, a requirement of a new EU anti-money-laundering directive, seeks to introduce more transparency in company ownership, as well as facilitate information sharing with anti-money-laundering agencies.
Speaking at a company law conference organised by the Malta Law Association, Mr Scicluna highlighted the importance of authorities and those obliged to carry out due diligence having immediate access to the information, particularly in the case of complex ownership structures.
The beneficial ownership registry, he said, may be accessible to the public if required in terms of the EU directive.
The registry will also cover trusts, associations and other set-ups.
The minister stressed the role of company practitioners as “gatekeepers” to ensure the Maltese commercial sector did not lend itself to criminality, upholding international legal standards and requirements and reporting to the competent authorities as required.
“Nobody should feel comfortable providing services to a company unless they know who is behind the company and what the company is being used for,” he said.
He also pledged that the government would take every possible step to ensure Malta was not used as a base for money laundering, assessing the risks associated with Maltese companies and put in place every measure to protect the sector and comply with international standards.
Also addressing the conference, David Fabri, head of the Department of Commercial Law at the University of Malta, criticised regulators’ “secrecy and defensiveness”, which he said was a means of hiding their “rot and incompetence”.
Dr Fabri said it was unhealthy and dangerous for regulators to write their own laws and rules without sufficient challenge or oversight, adding that these bodies often enjoyed a wide exemption from liability with no concrete or expert scrutiny, and that their extensive powers were not suitably balanced by greater accountability.
Referencing the Volkswagen emissions scandal, he said penalties in the US had risen to $25 billion while Europe and Malta showed relative inaction. The Competition and Consumer Affairs authority, he said, had failed to show leadership, limiting its response to providing a telephone number in the newspaper.
He also questioned the inaction of environmental authorities, the biggest driver of the matter in the US.