The Economy Ministry announced in a press release on Thursday January 19 that access to the Register of Beneficial Owners has been temporarily restored to the general public almost three weeks after it was suspended, officially “for technical reasons”.
Opened in April 2021, this platform allowed any citizen to easily know the identity of the owners of French companies; it was seen as a major step forward in terms of financial transparency and the fight against fraud and money laundering. For example, in July 2022, the weekly newspaper L’Obs, which belongs to a collective of independent journalists, used this information to reveal that around sixty personalities implicated in cases of corruption or subject to sanctions had invested heavily in French real estate.
But that data suddenly disappeared from the register in the early hours of 2023, Le Monde noted. Before complaining of a technical malfunction, the National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI), which is responsible for the technical management of the register, assured Le Monde on January 4 that the data on beneficial owners would no longer be “published in open data”. would be based on “a decision of the European Court of Justice”. A reference to the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) of 22 November 2022, which declared unlawful public access to European registers of beneficial ownership in the name of respect for privacy.
The future access conditions “defined shortly”
This decision had already prompted eight European countries to abruptly suspend access to their registers (Netherlands, Ireland, Malta, Cyprus, Germany, Belgium, Austria and Luxembourg). A severe blow to many civil society actors who use this data to document financial crime.
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This decision by Minister Bruno Le Maire is only provisional “until all the consequences of the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union” of November 2022 have been drawn, according to Bercy’s press release. “The future modalities of access to the data of the register of beneficial owners, taking into account the decision of the ECJ, will be defined shortly in liaison with the interested parties,” explains the Ministry, while ensuring that ” [les] media and [les] Civil society organizations with legitimate interest” can still access the register.