Significant Changes In The Law For UBO Registration

• Published date: 09 January 2022
• Subject Matter: Corporate/Commercial Law, Compliance, Corporate and Company Law
• Law Firm: Eurofast
• Author: Ms Drilona Likaj

The Parliament of Albania recently announced amendments in the Law on the register of beneficiary owners, through a new draft law The changes made are substantial and directly affect the process of declaring beneficial owners, as well as, the current situation of many of the reporting entities.

The first change is met in the reporting deadlines of new reporting entities, which have been extended by 10 days. The deadline for declaring the beneficial owners of new entities has changed from within 30 days to within 40 days from the date of establishment.

The deadline for responsible authorities to review the application for UBO registration is decided to be 2 working days. Within this period, the application must be accepted, if it is correct, returned for completion of documentation, if there are deficiencies or rejected, if there are inaccuracies.

Regarding the penalties applied for the subjects that do not respect the deadlines of UBO registration, the following changes applied:

• For initial non-registration within the deadline, reporting entities will be fined 50,000 ALL, and if non-reporting is exceeded by another 40 days, the applied fine will be 600,000 ALL;
• For existing...