Onsite Inspections & Beneficial Owners

The introduction of the Companies Act (Beneficial Ownership) Regulations imposed a new requirement on Legal Entities to submit beneficial ownership information to the Malta Business Registry (“MBR”). Moreover, Regulation 12 gave power to the Registrar to conduct onsite inspections to verify the information submitted by the legal entities.

The seminar will delve into the ways and means of how a company can identify its beneficial ownership, the obligation of the companies in order to keep updated information and notify the Malta Business Registry as regards to the beneficial ownership and the method of how the MBR selects companies in order to conduct onsite inspections and some practical examples of the findings identified during the onsite inspections will be outlined.

The Speaker

Annalise Abela is a Senior compliance analyst within the Compliance Unit at the Malta Business Registry. She is qualified with a Bachelor in Commerce from the University of Malta with 10 years’ experience in the finance sector. Ms Abela started her career at one of the local Maltese banks. Her main skills were sales proficiency as regards to credit, stockbroking and funds and team leadership. She also handled compliance issues as regards to internal checks. At the Malta Business Registry, Ms. Abela is one of the Analysts responsible of Risk Assessment on companies, she is also responsible of on-site inspections in order to verify the beneficial ownership of the companies, responsible of the compiling and reporting of statistics which relate AML/CFT and reporting and ensuring that companies are compliant with the regulations emanating out of the Companies Act (Register of Beneficial Owners) Regulations.