Policy paper

Overseas Territories: adopting publicly accessible registers of beneficial ownership

This draft legislation sets out a framework for the Overseas Territories registers, which will improve transparency and deter illicit finance.

• From: Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
• Published: 14 December 2020

This was published under the 2019 to 2022 Johnson Conservative government

Documents

The Overseas Territories (Publicly Accessible Registers of Beneficial Ownership of Companies): draft Order in Council

PDF, 136 KB, 4 pages

The Overseas Territories (Publicly Accessible Registers of Beneficial Ownership of Companies): draft Order in Council

ODT, 23.5 KB

This file is in an OpenDocument format

Overseas Territories: progress made on improving transparency and addressing illicit finance flows - explanatory note

HTML

Details

All of the inhabited UK Overseas Territories (OTs) have committed to adopt publicly accessible registers of company beneficial ownership.

The government welcomes this, and we have published a draft Order in Council under the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018 (SAMLA). The Order sets out the minimum standards we expect to see from the Overseas Territories’ registers.

We have also published an explanatory note for the draft Order that explains:

• the main provisions in the draft Order and the UK government’s expectations
• the progress the Territories have already made in addressing illicit finance flows and improving transparency
• our collective next steps

Published 14 December 2020