In November 2022 the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled, in Joined Cases C-37/20 and C-601/20, that a provision of the EU AML Directive 2015/849 which was amended by the EU AML Directive 2018/843 under which information on the beneficial ownership of corporate and other legal entities, held in central registers, must be provided to the general public, is invalid. Specifically, the Court found that the provision interfered with the rights recognised in Articles 7 and 8 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU.
Accordingly, to ensure our domestic legislation complies with the Court’s ruling, and following consultation with the Office of the Attorney General, a Statutory Instrument was prepared amending Regulations which govern two of Ireland’s registers of beneficial ownership information - the Register of Beneficial Ownership of Companies and Industrial & Provident Societies (RBO), which operates under the auspices of the Companies Registration Office, and the Central Register of Beneficial Ownership of Irish Collective Asset-management Vehicles, Credit Unions and Unit Trusts, which is operated by the Central Bank of Ireland. The Minister for Finance signed into law S.I. 308 of 2023, the European Union (Anti-Money Laundering: Beneficial Ownership of Corporate Entities) (Amendment) Regulations 2023 on 18th June 2023 which provides that tier 2 access requests are subject to an entity demonstrating it has a legitimate interest, subject to the satisfaction of the relevant Registrar.
The new AML package was agreed by the EU Council in May 2024 and the associated AML legislation specifies the rules and those categories of entities that are deemed to have legitimate interest. This includes the media and wider civic society in recognition of the need for transparency and society’s general interest in knowing the identity of beneficial owners for AML purposes. Articles 10, 12 and 14 of the 6th Anti-Money Laundering Directive refer. It should be noted that Article 14 states inter alia ‘the Commission shall define, by means of implementing acts, technical specifications and procedures necessary for the implementation of access on the basis of a legitimate interest by the central registers referred to in Article 10, including: standardised templates for requesting access to the central register and for requesting access to beneficial ownership information on legal entities and legal arrangements’.
Work by my Department has already commenced on transposing the new AML package and there is ongoing engagement with the EU Commission and other Member States in relation to the standardised templates for legitimate interest. The transposition deadline for this aspect of the new AML package is July 2026.
