As you know, unlisted companies – SARL (LLC), EURL (Sole Proprietorship with Limited Liability Company), SAS (Simplified public limited company), Sasu (Single member Simplified Public Limited Company), SA (Public Limited Company), sociétés civiles (non-trading businesses), etc. – are required to declare to the clerk of the commercial court of their area the identity of their “beneficial owner(s)”, i.e. the natural person(s) who directly or indirectly control the company.

Reminder: The beneficial owner(s) are the natural person(s):

• who holds, directly or indirectly, more than 25% of the company’s capital or voting rights.
• or who exercises, by any other means, a power of control over the company.

Until now, information on beneficial owners was available to the general public. But since July 31st, only people with a legitimate interest can access it, namely:

• competent authorities and professionals subject to rules applicable to anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism: they’ll have full access to the register.
• companies: they’ll have access to information relating to their beneficial owners, as well as, provided they can justify their legitimate interest, to that of the beneficial owners of their co-contractors in order to fulfil their obligations in terms of compliance and know your customer.
• journalists, researchers, and civil society actors committed to financial transparency: they will have access to the same database as the one that was freely accessible before July 31st, 2024.

It should be noted that these restricted access conditions were put in place to meet the requirements of both financial transparency and respect for privacy imposed by the Court of Justice of the European Union, which had considered that the opening of access to the register of beneficial owners to the general public constituted a serious violation of the right to privacy and the protection of personal data of the data subjects, as well as by a European directive of May 31 st , 2024.

In practice, the INPI platform provides a form for processing and responding to requests for access to the register of beneficial owners for each category of persons with a legitimate interest.

Copyright Les Echos Publishing – 2024