We have been successful in registering a handful of UK trusts on the Irish Trust Register (CRBOT). Some are already on the UK Trust Register but need to be added to the Irish Register due to the nature of the assets held (Irish Bonds).
However, we have noticed yesterday that a new message appears when adding a Trustee that is an Entity and is not already registered on a central EU Registration site (so HMRC’s Trust Register does not count!).
We have also received a message regarding one of our Trusts that was registered on the system back in 2022 stating
Please be aware that once the legal entity (Trust Company), has entered its relationship to the trust (in your case Trustee) then they should also add the beneficial owner type of ‘other natural person exercising effective control’ on the CRBOT to provide the details of the individual beneficial owners of that legal entity. Can you please update CRBOT with the information in relation to the ‘other natural person exercising effective control’ details or any information that is required under the above Regulations for this trust.
The legislation is not particularly clear as to who would need to be added as an 'other natural person exercising effective control’, especially if the Trustee is a legal Entity with multiple employees.
Has anyone else come across this issue yet? Our current thinking is that we would have to add in the Trustee Company Directors.
Just to be clear. There is no central European register of trusts as such in place at present. That is reserved to the Member States prerogative, hence the Directive.
There is an internet facility for finding beneficial ownership of entities including trusts which are registered on each Member State’s register under the acronym BORIS.
BORIS also enables trust service providers to be checked by those consulting the Register.
The notion of “control” here is not apparently being interpreted in Ireland as meaning a person with control though a beneficial interest or an originator of funds – an EU anomaly derived from the mistaken idea of an entity. It looks as if you can inform the register by simply inserting the Directors of the Trust Company without more.
However, that means that the Trust Company may also show up in Ireland on BORIS as a trust provider and perhaps become open to inquisitive third party attention through BORIS.
