The Ministry of Interior of the Slovak Republic has proposed a bill to amend Act No. 297/2008 Coll. on Prevention of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (the “Act”). The bill is to transpose the EU Fourth Anti-Money Laundering Directive.

The proposed amendment seeks, in particular, to tighten some of the obligations of so-called obliged entities, to reduce the thresholds at which obliged entities have special obligations to identify persons involved in commercial transactions and ultimate beneficial owners, and to tighten sanctions for a breach of law.

However, an important change, affecting almost all legal entities, will be the obligation to identify and register in the Commercial Register a legal entity’s ultimate beneficial owner(s), i.e., the natural person(s) who ultimately owns or controls the legal entity and/or the natural person(s) on whose behalf the legal entity performs its activities.

At present, the obligation to register ultimate beneficial owners only applies to public sector partners, i.e., the persons that enter into commercial relationships with the state.  If the proposed amendment is adopted, the obligation to register ultimate beneficial owners will be extended to almost all legal entities.

The deadline for registering ultimate beneficial owners should be two years from the moment the amendment comes into force. However, ultimate beneficial owners’ data will not be publicly available; such data will be accessible only to courts, law enforcement authorities, tax administrators, financial police services and obliged persons performing their duties under the Act.

Due to the fact that the legislative process is not yet complete, it can be assumed that significant changes can still be made in the content of the amendment.