On Friday, August 21, the Nicaraguan National Assembly approved the creation of the Registry of Final Beneficiaries, through reforms to the Registries General Law on and the addition of one article to the Commercial Code.
This Registry is intended to provide certainty of who are the true owners or controllers of legal persons operating in Nicaragua, with the goal of preventing or hindering these entities from being used for the Laundering of Assets or other criminal activities.
According to the reforms, companies will now have the obligation to provide a series of documents and information about their shareholders, and wherever they are legal persons, information must be provided about the shareholders or owners of those legal entities.
The authorization of the registration regulations for its full application is pending, however, the obligations to submit the information would be in force and applicable to all commercial companies once the law has been published in the official journal.
Certain aspects of the Act such as the sanctions regime, forms to be used to submit the information, and the definition of “control” over the company to identify the beneficiary, among others, will be clarified once the regulation is issued.
Update on August 25.
On August 25, within 2 working days of its approval, the law creating the Register of Final Beneficiaries was published in the Official Journal La Gaceta.
With this publication, all the provisions on the submission of documents established in the reform would enter into force, however, on August 24, an Information Circular of the National Directorate of Registries was made public, which instructed that companies will not have to make or send any kind of report on the subject of Final Beneficiary to the registration offices, as long as the registry regulations are not approved.
As long as there are no new documents, companies will have to understand that all the obligations embodied in the reform are put on hold and we are still in the expectation of the specific regulations.