Actions for Those Who has Scottish LP – Open Register of Beneficiaries

Dear Partners and our website users. You have all probably heard that lawmakers of Her Majesty decided to make the Register of Beneficiaries of Scottish LP as the public registry. We are not going to deeply discuss the details of this decision and its background, but we will try to highlight main points as shortly as possible.  At the end of the article we will give comments received from the register and variants of solutions.

What does the public register of beneficial owners mean? 

Since July 2017, final beneficiaries are persons that manage Scottish LPs (in short, in most cases, those are persons that hold powers of attorney), shall be obliged to declare themselves publicly and this information will be accessible to anyone on the Internet, namely in the Company House Register. That means that everyone can find out who stands behind which Scottish LP. In English terminology, it sounds like PSC — People with Significant Control. The Law specifies 4 provisions helpful to identify the person and you will be covered by any provision in any case unless you liquidate your company or assign your company to your “partner”, or use any other solutions.

How are these changes risky to disclosed owners? 

If you keep the absolutely “white business” and are not afraid of publicity, then you may be quite. If you avoid publicity, we recommend that you change the structure.

For tax authorities of any state, the information is most important. Although, they had the opportunity to request such information in the UK via complicated procedures of inquiry, today any employee of the tax department of your country of tax residency will be able to search public registries manually and identify persons who prefer offshore structures. We think it makes no sense to explain what it will bring to.

Yet, debtors will face problems since creditors will definitely make any attempts to reach out to their borrowers.

We are convinced that due to the changes, many criminal schemes that have not previously aroused the interest of law enforcement agencies due to high energy consumption, will also be opened.

There is the reason to believe that banking structures and credit institutions will be more willing to promote Scottish LPs due to their transparency.

Moreover, your potential clients will prefer to work with your Scottish structure, since it will be more transparent.

Actions for those who has Scottish LPs. Solution Options

Our company has been prepared to such changes for long time and worked out various solution options. We can assure you that share diffusion, assignment of a range of companies from other jurisdictions as owners and PSC, other similar solutions will not help much, but they are only used to retrieve your assets.

We have prepared about 5 different solutions that will not be so expensive  and that will keep your anonymity in the future. Since these solutions are unique, we are not going to disclose them in this article; instead, we welcome those who may be concerned to contact our experts by phone or other communication means.

Questions to the Register: (translated from English into Russian with our comments)

Who and when should I submit the PSC data?

The information on controlling persons should be submitted by all Scottish partnerships since 24/07/2017 within 14 days, i.e., up to 07/08/2017

Do I need to submit the PSC data when I register a new Scottish LP? 

When registering new Scottish partnerships since 24/07/2017, the PSC data should be filed immediately.

Where and how should I file the PSC data?

The forms should be filed with the Register only in hard copy; for Scottish partnerships we shall not use on-line system as we did not earlier.

What penalties may be imposed for failure to file the PSC data?

The Register shall not impose penalties to those companies that fail to file their PSC data in time, since they know the volume of work. There are NO formal penalties for delays at all, although failure to file that data on time is the criminal offense as per the new law. However, the Register is going to allow the “reasonable” (as they state) time period to file this data. Surely, they cannot specify terms formally since the period of 14 days is specified by law. Therefore, we advise you to file such data no later than 20.09.2017.

Will the annual renewal date change and will the company’s renewal cost increase?

The date of yearly renewal will not change or postpone, it is still bound to the date of registration (date of power of attorney). The cost of the annual renewal will not change. When ordering an annual prolongation, the client shall be required to complete and sign the declaration confirming that his PSC data have not changed. The form shall be provided.