NewsroomRegulation

You know the company. You know the CEO. But who actually owns it?

Behind the chief executive there can be layers of holdings, nominees and offshore entities, with the ultimate beneficial owner sitting at the centre. That gap is exactly where sanctions exposure, fraud and compliance failures hide, and we met the chief executive has never been due diligence.

· 2 MIN READ · BY THE KYCK DESK

Three rulebooks, one demand

The EU anti money laundering package sets a common beneficial ownership standard for obliged entities across the union. The United Kingdom now requires directors and people with significant control to verify their identity with Companies House. In the United States the beneficial ownership regime has narrowed to foreign registered companies, but the customer due diligence rule that applies to banks has not moved.

Different mechanisms, same demand: know who really owns and controls the businesses you deal with, and be able to show how you established it.

Three questions that make it concrete

  • Who is the legal entity? Business verification against official corporate registries.
  • Who ultimately owns and controls it? Ownership mapped through every layer to the individuals at the top.
  • Is it safe and legal to deal with them? Sanctions, PEP and adverse media screening on the entity and its people, kept running after approval.

Why the threshold matters more than the chart

Most regimes converge on ownership of twenty five percent or more, plus whoever exercises control by other means. That second half is what a neat ownership chart tends to miss, and it is where nominee arrangements do their work.

KYCK brings business verification, ownership mapping and screening into one flow, with a timestamped audit trail behind every decision. Read our EU AMLR briefing or see counterparty onboarding.

Sources

Related reading

EU AMLR briefingCompanies House IDVFinCEN final rule

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