The Transparency Register will become an Independent and Comprehensive Register
> August 2021

As of 1 August 2021, the existing notification fiction will be repealed without replacement and the Transparency Register will be a full register. It will then no longer be sufficient to refer to oth-er public registers. Obligated legal persons must enter their beneficial owners’ full personal data in the Transparency Register. This is the only way to fulfil the reporting obligation in the future. So far, the Transparency Register, introduced in 2017, has been organised only as a catch-all register. The notification requirement was deemed to have been fulfilled if the beneficial owners are identified from entries and documents in other public registers, e.g. the commercial register, where they can be retrieved electronically.

With the amendments under the TraFinG Gw (218/843), this notification fiction is repealed without replacement. The directive stipulates for all transparency registers of the EU member states to be interconnected. As the German Transparency Register by way of a catch-all register partly was referring to other registers, there is no structured and qualified presentation of the data sets available for such networking. This is the reason why the conversion to a full register will take place on 01.08.2021. The EU member states hope that this will make the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing more effective.

As of now, it has therefore become necessary for companies to actively enter their beneficial owners in the transparency register so that the data records are complete as of 1 August 2021. On a case-by case basis, fines of up to EUR 100,000 may be imposed for failure to comply with the notification re-quirement. In case of serious and repeated violations, the fine could increase up to EUR 1,000,000.

We are happy to help you with implementing the requirements. For more information, please contact Ms. Jasmina Herold jh@becklaw.de.