Who is the Beneficial Owner? The National Assembly of RA Adopted the Package of Laws on Disclosure of the Beneficial Owners in Armenia

On June 3, 2021 the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia adopted a package of laws that expands the scope of companies obliged to disclose their beneficial owners.

In particular, the legal entities operating in the regulated sector of public utilities and in the sector of audiovisual media services will join the companies obliged to disclose their beneficial owners from1 September, 2021. The obligation will be effective from1 January, 2022 for all other legal entities, except for LLCs with only natural persons as participants. For LLCs with only natural persons as participants and non-commercial organizations the obligation to disclose beneficial owners will be effective from1 January, 2023. Under the new regulations, the exceptions are set for the legal entities registered by the Central Bank.

The adopted package of laws unifies the definitions of the “beneficial owner” stipulated in the Law on Anti-Money Laundering/Combating the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT), and the “beneficial (real) owner” stipulated in the Law on State Registration of Legal Entities, Separated Divisions of Legal Entities, Enterprises and Individual Entrepreneurs and used within the framework of the EITI Armenia. The term of "beneficial owner" (BO) will be used in all regulations with common criteria.

At the same time, in the metal mining sector stricter criteria than those which are defined by the Law on Anti-Money Laundering/Combating the Financing of Terrorism are kept, following to the EITI Standard’s requirements and the Armenia-EITI MSG’s decisions.

However, under the new package of laws, certain amendments have been made for the metal mining sector, aiming at eliminating registered gaps in regulations, bringing the regulations in line with the international requirements, implementing data verification mechanisms, improving the business process of submitting BO declarations.

The Armenia-EITI secretariat prepared a guideline presenting the new legislative changes for the metal mining companies obliged to submit BO declarations.

The links to the adopted laws are available here.

The new requirements for the metal mining companies enter into force on1 September, 2021. If after1 September, 2021 there are changes in the company’s beneficial owners’ data, the company shall submit a declaration corresponding to the new regulations. If there are no changes in the company’s beneficial owners’ data, the annual declaration corresponding to the new regulations will be submitted by 20 February, 2022.

The head photo from Unsplash