As part of our service, we aim to keep you informed of changes to the law which affect trusts.
There have been some developments that trustees should be aware of and which require action. In particular, two things:
Obligation to Maintain Records on Beneficial Ownership
Since 1 January 2018, all trusts have been obliged to maintain and keep updated records to ascertain and verify identity of their beneficial owners.
This is done by way of a declaration of the trustees which is held on the minute book of the trust.
We have previously advised our clients about this obligation.
If your trust does not hold this declaration on file, it is already a legal requirement to do so. If you need help in preparing this declaration, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Register of Beneficial Ownership Information
The amendment to AML Act significantly changes Act No. 304/2013 Coll., on public registers of legal entities and natural persons by establishing a new public register concerning beneficial ownership data of legal entities registered in the Czech Republic. This is a new register (in addition to the register of trusts, which we have already discussed).
The Register of Beneficial Owners is being established as non-public register maintained by the Registry Court. This means that the data from the Register of Beneficial Owners will not be publicly available.
Although the wording of the amendment to AML Act is not clear as to the deadline for you to register your trust on this new register, the most common interpretation presumes that existing trusts will be obliged to notify the data to the Register of Beneficial Owners before 1 January 2019. In addition, our understanding is that registration is free of charge this year but from next year, fees will apply.
For this reason, we now recommend that you take action by registering your trust on the register of beneficial owners.
This can be done in two ways:
- Do it yourself at https://issm.justice.cz/. We have already registered some trusts and did not find the process especially onerous, although as usual with public bodies, notarised signatures are required, or
- You can ask us to register your trust for you. As this is a non-standard activity for us, we are forced to charge an additional time-based fee for this, which in most cases (ie. without complications) we anticipate will be approximately 1000 CZK.
If you have any questions about any of the above, please don’t hesitate to let us know.
