Recital 132

(132) The risks posed by foreign legal entities and foreign legal arrangements which are misused to channel proceeds of funds into the Union’s financial system need to be mitigated. Since beneficial ownership standards in place in third countries might not be sufficient to allow for the same level of transparency and timely availability of beneficial ownership information as in the Union, there is a need to ensure adequate means to identify the beneficial owners of foreign legal entities or foreign legal arrangements in specific circumstances. Therefore, legal entities created outside the Union and express trusts or similar legal arrangements administered outside the Union or whose trustees or persons holding an equivalent position reside or are established outside the Union should be required to disclose their beneficial owners where they operate in the Union by entering into a business relationship with a Union’s obliged entity, by acquiring real estate in the Union or certain high value goods from obliged entities located in the Union, or by being awarded a contract following a public procurement procedure for goods or services, or concessions. There might be variations in the risk exposure across Member States, including depending on the category or type of activities carried out by obliged entities and on the attractiveness for criminals of real estate properties in their territory. Therefore, where Member States identify cases of higher risk, they should be able to take additional mitigating measures to address those risks.

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Source: EUR-Lex CELLAR · retrieved 2026-09-04 · Text as adopted (Official Journal); later amendments are not incorporated in this text.