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General news for Tuesday, September 8, 2020
Source: GNA
2020-09-08
Registrar General, Jemima Oware
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Jemima Oware, the Registrar General, said Tuesday that the Department is ready to implement a new Central Registry of Beneficiaries for all businesses in Ghana to reveal the identities of the owners to help fight corruption.
Ms Oware told the Ghana News Agency in an interview that the exercise, scheduled to start in October 2020, would first assimilate the extractive industry and other high-risk sectors such as banks and other financial institutions.
Benefit Real (BO), a term in national and international commercial law, refers to “natural persons” who exercise significant influence over a company and receive benefits from it even though they are not its legal owners.
“Some people may assign a ‘nominee’ in relation to their shareholder or director position on the board and they would be on the back-end control matters, they would have a legal arrangement with those people that we would not be aware of, but things They have changed now, ”Ms. Oware said.
He explained that the lack of information on who owned and controlled Ghanaian companies had created a “dangerous and growing gap” in the country’s fight against corruption, money laundering, terrorist financing and other forms of crime. financial
Ms Oware said that none of the country’s laws provided for the disclosure of the beneficial owner, until last year, “and this made it easier for companies in the past to conceal the identity of their owners if necessary.”
He said that after the publication of the Panama Papers, which reveal the names of wealthy and well-known individuals who have had dealings abroad through companies, and global efforts to address issues related to anti-corruption and tax evasion, The government came under pressure to act on the disclosure of beneficial owners, hence the approval of the new Companies Law of 2019 (Law 992).
“The Act has improved the ease of doing business in Ghana by simplifying the company registration process to ensure that Ghana, as a gateway to Africa, becomes a competitive and transparent investment destination,” he noted.
Ms Oware said the new business ownership would address four key issues, the first being the reinforcement of the underlying legal and regulatory requirements for the disclosure of different types of ownership in various legal vehicles.
Second, there is the application of common standards such as the Real Property Data Standard and the linking of property information with other policy areas to help track money and assets across sectors and jurisdictions.
Third is the openness of beneficial ownership data, along with robust verification systems to ensure data is accurate and usable, and the fourth is opening formal and informal channels of accountability to enable citizens to actively use proprietary data to uncover corruption networks.
Ms. Oware said that starting next month, anyone who wants to register a company to operate in the extractive industry should visit www.rgd.gov.gh and download the Benefit Beneficiary form and provide the necessary answers.
“There are no thresholds for shareholders and directors of extractive industry players operating in Ghana. Whether you own one percent or two percent, that information must be disclosed.
“However, if it is a foreign company within the extractive industry operating in Ghana, that shareholder must have at least five percent before disclosure is made in the BO registry.”
The Secretary General said that the government remained committed to complying with a number of international obligations regarding the implementation of the
Regime of beneficial owners.
The government would work through partnerships with the Center for Financial Intelligence, the Ghana Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative and the Financial Action Task Force to help meet the deadline for various beneficial ownership requirements.
He emphasized that all records must list the Final Beneficiary (UBO) and include the same basic information: name, month of birth, nationality, country of residence and nature / size of participation in companies or entities and Tax Identification. Numbers (TIN).
In the mining, oil and gas sectors, the implementation of BO’s transparency disclosures is taking place through the Ghana Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (GHEITI) with the support of the Registrar General.
“This information will be made available to the public through EITI country reports and / or national registries,” he noted.
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