“This law has two connotations: one about the registration with the National Office for Prevention and Control of Money Laundering of those who witnessed cash transactions and one about revealing the actual shareholders of a company,” says Valentina Saygo, managing partner of tax consultancy Ask for Accounting.
“There was quite a hysteria in January, when the website of the National Office for Prevention and Control of Money Laundering went down. The enforcement guidelines of the law came out quite a while after the law came into force.”
The annual statement must be filed with the Trade Register office where the company is registered within 15 days from the approval of the annual financial statements. Public corporations, national companies and fully or majority state-owned companies are not required to file such statements.
“Law 129/2019 was probably amended under the pressure or as instructed by the European Commission but in Romania it becomes too bureaucratic. It is hard to enforce this law. The forms on the Trade Register website to be filled to state who the shareholders are are different from those that actually have to be submitted. It is also very difficult to fill those forms.”
Companies failing to comply will be fined RON5,000 to RON10,000.
“Penalties are unpleasant. Banks have already started pressuring legal entities about their real owners. We’ve been seeing lots of accounts frozen because of this lately.”
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)