BVI: Martin Kenney comments on new company register reforms
Martin Kenney says the BVI government faces a tricky balancing act in expanding access to company ownership information.
MKS Law head of firm, Martin Kenney, spoke to the BVI Beacon last week, commenting on a new beneficial ownership register set to be launched in the BVI by June.
The register won’t be fully public but will be open to people with a “legitimate interest.”
Martin said the government faces a tricky balancing act.
“If the mission is to hold people to account for fraud and corruption, a controlled system of transparency of [ultimate-beneficial-ownership] data is to be preferred over an unlimited one as advocated by Dame Margaret Hodge, Global Witness and the other transparency campaigners.”
“This is because the latter will lead to the instantaneous destruction of the investigative value of UBO data upon its publication to the world at large.”
He said that the proposed legislation would be closely scrutinised.
“The devil will lie in the details of the BVI Business Companies and Limited Partnerships (Beneficial Ownership) (Amendment) Regulations, which, according to the recent Speech from the Throne, will define who will possess a ‘legitimate interest’ in UBO identification data sufficient to warrant access to it.”
