Ultimate Beneficial Ownership Registration Requirements

As you may have heard, from the 1st of April 2023, a number of Acts were amended (the Companies Act 71 of 2008, the Financial Intelligence Centre Act 38 of 2001 (“FICA”) and the Trust Property Control Act 57 of 1988 (collectively, the “Acts”)) to introduce and regulate beneficial ownership legal compliance obligations for Companies, Close Corporations, Trusts and Non-profit Companies (the “Entities”). 

On the 19th of September 2023, the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (“CIPC”) issued a notice to the general public, stating that the CIPC will start enforcement proceedings against non-compliant Entities from 1 October 2023. Naturally it is important to ensure that your Entity is compliant. 

By way of summary:

“Beneficial Ownership” generally means when a natural person who, independently or together with any other person, directly or indirectly owns a legal Entity, or exercises effective control of the legal Entity. The amendments to the Acts account for beneficial owners, as well as an increase in transparency and reportability of Entities, following South Africa’s grey listing earlier this year.  

The compliance obligations include additional disclosure and reporting requirements and ultimately, it is mandatory for Entities to comply with the obligations imposed. Considering the potential for the CIPC or the Master (in the case of Trusts) to impose sanctions, we believe it is best to get ahead of this and submit your registration and update your registers to ensure compliance. 

For further reading, please click on this link to better understand the new beneficial ownership requirements: https://bit.ly/3F9i9VW 

Should you have any questions or wish for us to assist in completing your beneficial ownership requirements, updating your share registers and submitting the relevant registrations, please do reach out to us on cosec@eversheds-sutherland.co.za.