On 3 January 2023, the Cyprus Registrar of Companies announced that, following the suspension of public access to the Beneficial Owner Register in line with the requirements of EU case law (see our earlier blog post here), members of staff of obliged entities under the AML regime (eg financial and credit institutions and similar) will need to submit a “solemn declaration” in order to access UBO information on the register moving forward.

Under this process, the obliged entities would be entitled to access solely in order to conduct their KYC exercises on their own customers and applicants for business. The making of a false statements on the solemn declaration may amount to the criminal offence of perjury under Cyprus law.

The Solemn Declaration can be found here and the official announcement here.