The Hungarian register of ultimate beneficial owners contains the data of the data providers falling under the scope of the act ruling the register of ultimate beneficial owners, for instance limited liability companies, public limited companies, associations, foundations or notary offices.
On 1 February 2022, further provisions of the act entered into force. From this date, in order to perform its statutory tasks, the authority, the prosecutor’s office, the court and the supervisory authority may disclose information obtained from the register of the ultimate beneficial owners (a) to an authority, prosecutor's office, court or supervisory authority of another Member State of the European Union and (b) under certain conditions, to an authority, prosecutor's office, court or supervisory authority of a third country.
In addition, from the above date, service providers under the Money Laundering Act (e.g. credit institutions, financial service providers, auditors or attorneys-at-law) may access, free of charge, the data of data providers stored in the register of ultimate beneficial owners in order to fulfil their customer due diligence measures or data verification obligations.
From 1 February 2022, in case the authority, the prosecutor’s office, the court or the supervisory authority detects a discrepancy between the ultimate beneficial ownership data known to them and the ultimate beneficial ownership data recorded in the register, they state the data known to them in a notification. The service providers must also notify the registry body if they record data other than those stored in the register of ultimate beneficial owners. These notifications reduce the so-called TT index of data providers, which is an indicator of the level of confidence of the data providers’ ultimate beneficial ownership data in the register of ultimate beneficial owners, with a value between 1 and 10. If the value of the TT index due to the notifications of deviations falls below 8 points, the data provider’s ultimate beneficial ownership data is classified as “uncertain”, and if it falls below 6 points, the data provider’s ultimate beneficial ownership data is classified as “unreliable”. However, in case following the information of the registry body, the data provider confirms or modifies its ultimate beneficial ownership data, the registry body will adjust the value of the TT index to 10 points.
By Lidia Suveges, Attorney at law, KCG Partners Law Firm
