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The Registrar General, Ms. Jemima Oware, has ordered companies to provide their beneficial ownership (BO) information to the Registrar General (RGD) service by June 30, 2021.
She said the directive applied to businesses under legacy data, as well, businesses that already existed before the RGD rolled out the BO ledger on October 1, 2020 and that failure to comply would result in penalties.
New applicants from January 1, 2021 must also download the forms, fill in their BO information and attach them to the registration documents.
“It is the responsibility of companies to keep a register of members in which they must enter all the contact details of their members and beneficial owners and verify their BO information before sending them to the company registrar.
“We talked about it, but I don’t think they took us seriously. Now they will see how serious we are, ”said the Registrar General.
Ms. Oware gave the directive Tuesday during a media workshop organized by the RGD on the concept of BO Information.
The engagement was supported by the United Kingdom (UK) DFID-funded Anti-Corruption Action Strengthening Program (STAAC) and the Strategic Beneficial Ownership Support Team (BOSS).
The Registrar General said BO Transparency was introduced by governments around the world to promote transparency and a level playing field for businesses.
She said it also reduces domestic and cross-border bribery and corruption, fraud and illegal financial transactions.
Ms Oware said the Companies Act of 2019 (Law 992) provided for the collection of BO data on all businesses, adding that the BO regime required the declaration of the beneficial owners of every business operating in Ghana.
She said the information would be kept in a central register by the enterprise registrar and made available to relevant authorities such as the Financial Intelligence Center, the Bureau of Economic and Organized Crime (EOCO), the Ghana Police Service. , the Human Rights and Administrative Justice Commission (CHRAJ), and the business community and the public on request to promote business transparency.
The Registrar General said all companies would be required to submit information on BOs at the time of incorporation, when filing annual reports and whenever they wish to make changes to their contact information.
The Company Law defines a beneficial owner as a natural person who directly or indirectly owns or exercises substantial control over a person or a company.
A beneficial owner is also one who has a substantial economic interest in a business or who derives substantial economic benefits from it, whether acting alone or with others.
He or she is the person on whose behalf a transaction is carried out; or who exercises control or significant influence over a legal person or legal arrangement through a formal or informal arrangement.
Thus, a BO of an entity is, therefore. a person who will enjoy the economic rights arising from the entity, whether he is also the registered legal owner, i.e. the property of the entity is registered in his name.
RGD legal team Ms Elizabeth Osae Omane said a person who failed to provide required information or provided false or misleading information to the Registrar had committed an offense and was liable on summary conviction a fine of at least fifty penalty units and no more. two hundred and fifty units or imprisonment for not less than one year and not more than two years or both.
In addition, she said, when a company did not comply with the law, the company and every executive in the company were required to pay the registrar an administrative penalty of twenty-five penalty units for each day that the breaches continued.
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