E-Registry Launched for Beneficial Ownership by BRS
The Kenya Business Registration Service (“BRS”) has formally rolled out the Beneficial Ownership Information E-Registry on its online platform. This follows the publication of the Companies (Beneficial Ownership Information) Regulations, 2020 (the “Regulations”), in February 2020, which we discussed in a past Client Alert, which you can find on this link.
The Regulations require every company to keep a register of its beneficial owners and to submit a copy of this register to the Registrar of Companies. However, the format of the Register to be submitted to the Registrar of Companies was not set out in the Regulations. The roll-out of the Beneficial Ownership E-Registry now provides the prescribed form and paves way for companies to begin making the required disclosures to the Registrar of Companies.
The BRS is also in the process of developing Beneficial Ownership Guidelines (“the Guidelines”), which will provide further clarity and guidance on the process of making the beneficial ownership declarations on the E-Registry. These Guidelines are expected to be published within the last quarter of 2020. The Regulations published earlier in 2020 did not provide a deadline for the submission of the Register to the Registrar of Companies, and it is our view that once the Guidelines are published, the BRS will impose a deadline for the submission of the required information to the Registrar of Companies. It is therefore critical that companies begin to prepare and submit the Beneficial Ownership information to the Registrar of Companies, without further delay.
The Regulations are already in force and compliance is, therefore, a legal requirement. It should be noted that criminal liability exists for non-compliance and liability can extend to the directors and company secretary of a Kenyan company. Therefore, reputational risk is also critical to consider.
