Albania: Significant changes in the Law for UBO Registration

The Parliament of Albania recently announced amendments in the Law on the register of beneficiary owners, through a new draft law The changes made are substantial and directly affect the process of declaring beneficial owners, as well as, the current situation of many of the reporting entities. 

The first change is met in the reporting deadlines of new reporting entities, which have been extended by 10 days. The deadline for declaring the beneficial owners of new entities has changed from within 30 days to within 40 days from the date of establishment. 

The deadline for responsible authorities to review the application for UBO registration is decided to be 2 working days. Within this period, the application must be accepted, if it is correct, returned for completion of documentation, if there are deficiencies or rejected, if there are inaccuracies. 

Regarding the penalties applied for the subjects that do not respect the deadlines of UBO registration, the following changes applied: 

• For initial non-registration within the deadline, reporting entities will be fined 50,000 ALL, and if non-reporting is exceeded by another 40 days, the applied fine will be 600,000 ALL; 
• For existing entities, the non-compliance with the deadlines set for both the initial registration and the UBO changes will be fined with 400,000 ALL. 

This draft law has also set the deadline for UBO registration for existing indirectly owned entities, as well as, non-profit organizations, on 01.04.2021. 

Finally, in the transitional provisions of the law, it is decided to erase all the applied penalties, imposed prior to this change, for non-compliance with the reporting deadlines provided that these obligations are met within 01.04.2022 by the reporting entities.  

All entities that have paid their fines for violation of deadlines, have been given the right to a refund of the full amount paid, provided that they have fulfilled all the obligations of the application for registration of UBO which derive by law. 

For additional information, please contact our Country Executive, Ms. Drilona Likaj, at our Eurofast office in Albania at drilona.likaj@eurofast.eu .