Guernsey's beneficial ownership register could go public to "meet EU expectations"

Wednesday 05 September 2018

Gavin St Pier met with a UK MP on Monday, who was visiting the island to advocate making our beneficial ownership register public.

Andrew Mitchell MP and Dame Margaret Hodge met with Deputies Gavin St Pier, Lyndon Trott and Jonathan Le Tocq to discuss a new EU directive, which aims to push public registers.

Currently, Guernsey's beneficial ownership register is only accessible by the police, government and other authorities, and unlike the UK equivalent, cannot be accessed by the public. The registers themselves hold the names of business owners, along with other crucial details, and are used to prevent money laundering. 

Guernsey first adopted one after a big push from former Prime Minister David Cameron, who brought through legislation for the UK's, and pushed for the Crown Dependencies'.

Now, Andrew Mitchell wants the islands to take the next step in making them public.

Deputy St Pier said: "Both Dame Margaret and Andrew Mitchell have been advocating public registers of corporate beneficial ownership in the Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories and obtained Westminster's approval for Parliament to impose them on Overseas Territories.

"We agreed that the centuries old constitutional relationship we have with the Crown should not be threatened."

Delighted that Andrew Mitchell rightly described Guernsey as having ‘good’ regulation. Response provided: pic.twitter.com/1gKZmzaNhl

— Gavin St Pier (@gavinstpier) 4 September 2018

Deputy St Pier also said the meeting was an opportunity to demonstrate to Mr Mitchell that Guernsey already had "good regulation", a fact the MP came away acknowledging.

"We were able to ensure that they had access to the expertise on island and understand the framework under which business operate. This proves greater regulation than in the UK and by sharing our experience we can help drive standards up elsewhere.

"We are all in strong agreement for the need to tackle financial crime, money laundering and aggressive tax avoidance by maintaining high standards." 

The European Directive - its fifth anti-money laundering directive - has only recently been agreed, and is yet to fully be rolled out, but it will force EU member states to make their registers public. Meanwhile, its fourth directive is also yet to be fully implemented, but pushes for more information sharing between law enforcements - a feature already facilitated by Guernsey's register.

Deputy St Pier said, in much the same vain, Guernsey would do what it was expected to as a responsible third country (its position with regards to Europe).

"We are also looking to ensure we meet what is being expected by the EU of third countries in terms of greater exchange and access to beneficial ownership information by law enforcement authorities," he said.

"This is a standard that is still being created under the EU's fourth Anti-Money laundering directive and is yet to be rolled out. The EU's fifth directive has only recently been agreed and is yet to be implemented by EU member states. This will seek to take this concept further and obviously we will be monitoring its implementation closely."