KIEV: The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) has approved new requirements on disclosure of the structure of banks’ owners, which foresee the disclosure of information on each individual involved.
The requirements are stipulated in NBU resolution No. 328 on approving the procedure on providing information on the structure banks’ owners that took effect on May 23.
“The structure of banks’ owners is considered transparent if it allows for defining all holders of large stakes in banks; all key players in the banks and all key participants of all legal entities in the chain of ownership of corroborate rights of banks; and the character of liaisons between the entities,” the NBU said on its website.
The NBU said that trust relations for holding banks’ shares have been settled separately: the NBU will declare the structure of banks’ owners as being non-transparent if the shares in banks directly or indirectly belong to so-called “discretionary trust.”
The central bank said that a trust is a regime of holding or managing property based on the trust agreement (declaration, etc) that foresees the splitting of ownership into legal ownership that is transferred to the trustee and beneficiary ownership which is transferred to beneficiaries. Legal ownership is ownership, use and management of property in favor and in the interests of beneficiaries, and beneficiary ownership is the right to receive any benefit from property.
The NBU also settled the situation regarding the scattering of ownership in banks between many individuals when none of them holds a large stake in a bank. The central bank has the right to demand information on the financial state of a bank from the top ten shareholders with a share of over 1%. “Banks are given two weeks to present their renewed ownership structures to the NBU,” reads the report.
The NBU, in resolution No. 332 on amendments to some legal acts of the NBU of May 21, 2015, said that it had banned banks with non-transparent ownership structure from receiving general licenses for currency transactions, refinancing credits and taking part in tenders to support liquidity and authorized itself to declare these banks troubled.
