The Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad) has recently issued a preliminary draft of a proposal to partially amend Law 10/2010, of 28 April, on the prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing and Royal Decree 304/2014, of 5 May, approving the Regulation of Law 10/2010 in order to implement the 4th Anti-Money Laundering Directive (Directive (EU) 2015/849 of 20 May 2015 on the prevention of the use of the financial system for the purposes of money laundering or terrorist financing) into the Spanish legal framework.
Although this proposal is at a very initial stage and is still subject to extensive discussions and amendments, for now it does not contemplate creating a central register containing the information on beneficial ownership as set out under article 30 of the 4th Anti-Money Laundering Directive.
The current Spanish anti-money laundering rules oblige, inter alia, financial entities and public notaries to identify the ultimate beneficial owners of their counterparties and take appropriate risk-based measures in order to verify their identity prior to establishing business relations. Furthermore, credit institutions are obliged to provide certain information to public registries in connection with beneficial owners of their clients. However, these requirements do not fully comply with the regime set out in Article 30 of the 4th Anti-Money Laundering Directive.
We will keep you posted of any updates in the implementation process.