At a recent meeting of the CRO Forum (an umbrella group for the accountancy, legal and company formation profession liaising with CRO officials) it was revealed that there are 30,000 companies out of a population of 250,000 companies that had not, as at February 2022, filed their beneficial owner details with the Register of Beneficial Owners.

Staff at the RBO are hoping that some of this shortfall can be accounted for by companies which will be struck off for not filing their annual returns on time.

The April 2021 Criminal Justice (Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing) Acts 2010 to 2021 made it a requirement for designated persons to report two types of offence to the RBO. These were originally covered in our blog in May 2021 here. These offences are:

  • ‘Discrepancy’ and
  • ‘Non-compliance’

Both offences are defined in the AML law.

According to the meeting minutes, in the month of January 2022, the RBO received over 1,000 ‘non-compliance’ and ‘discrepancy’ reports, which would suggest a full-year figure of over 12,000.

 

Are your AML Policies Controls & Procedures up to date?

We have just released our latest Anti-Money Laundering Policies Controls & Procedures Manual (March 2022) – View the Table of Contents click here.

We have also just released an updated AML webinar (March 2022) available here, which accompanies the AML Manual. It explains the current legal AML reporting position for accountancy firms.

To ensure your letters of engagement and similar templates are up to date visit our site here where immediate downloads are available in Word format. A bulk discount is available for orders of five or more items if bought together.

For our latest Audit Quality Control Manual (October 2021) (implementing the latest Irish Audit & Accounting Supervisory Authority standards including ISQC1 on audit quality control) click here. View the Table of Contents here.