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IOL: Deadline approaches for South African trustees to submit Beneficial Ownership information

Trust expert Phia van der Spuy recently attended a high-level conference in Namibia regarding an inter-regional peer exchange on beneficial ownership (BO) transparency and the role of trusts. BO transparency is one of the ‘tick-boxes’ required by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) when assessing the risk of doing business with a country. South Africa is still on FATF’s greylist and it is in all South Africans’ interests to cooperate in an attempt to be removed from the greylist.

In a drive to improve the chance to exit the greylist in early 2025, last year the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development set a deadline for filing beneficial ownership registers with the Master by November 15, 2024. Few trustees and trust practitioners are aware of this deadline.

The media statement reminds trustees that the law is already in operation and remains applicable with non-compliance penalties since 1 April 2023. A trustee who is convicted of any of the offenses referred to above will be liable to a fine of up to R10 million or imprisonment for a period of up to five years or to both fine and imprisonment.

The Master plans to launch a multi-pronged media campaign to urge trustees to comply voluntarily.

Trustees should not assume that their service providers will ensure they remain compliant. Trustees remain ultimately responsible for compliance and may face sanctions for non-compliance. Layperson trustees should seek the help of professional service providers who specialise in trust services to assist them with these onerous requirements.

Read the article here.

Phia van der Spuy is a Chartered Accountant with a Masters degree in tax and a registered Fiduciary Practitioner of South Africa®, a Chartered Tax Adviser, a Trust and Estate Practitioner (TEP), and the founder of Trusteeze®, the provider of a digital trust solution.

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