Edited by Fabrizio Vedana

The directors of companies with legal personality and the founder, if alive, or the persons entrusted with the representation and administration of private legal entities shall communicate to the Business Registry Office of the territorially competent Chamber of Commerce the data and information relating to beneficial ownership, acquired pursuant to Articles 22, paragraph 3, and 22, paragraph 4, of the Anti-Money Laundering Decree, for their registration and storage in the appropriate section of the register.
This is provided for in Article 3, paragraph 1 of the draft decree of the Minister of Economy and Finance containing provisions regarding the communication, access, and consultation of data and information relating to the beneficial ownership of companies and trusts, adopted by the Council of State with Opinion 01835/2021 published on December 6.
The new draft decree is composed of eleven articles, divided into three sections:
• the first contains the general provisions;
• the second regulates access to the register of beneficial owners and to the register of trusts by the authorities, by the obliged entities and by other entities;
• the third section regulates relations with the Revenue Agency and other territorial government offices and dictates provisions for data processing and security.
It remains confirmed that the obligation to notify the newly established register of beneficial owners falls on the directors of limited liability companies, joint-stock companies, limited partnerships by shares, cooperatives, associations, foundations, and other private institutions that acquire legal personality through registration in the register of legal entities established by the prefectures.
However, the proposed wording for Article 4, paragraph 1, letter e), which now requires the administrator's notification to the beneficial owners' register, must not only specify any exceptional circumstances that would justify withholding the data from third parties, but also provide an email address to which any requests to the interested party can be sent.
This specification is of fundamental importance in order to allow beneficial owners to minimize access to their data by parties other than supervisory authorities or those who view it to comply with anti-money laundering obligations. Indeed, if the communication sent to the beneficial owners' register by the company director indicates a counter-interest in disclosing the data to third parties, the Chamber of Commerce must forward the access request to the counter-interested party via communication to the certified email address provided by the director when notifying the beneficial owners' register.
Within ten days of receiving the aforementioned communication, the party counter-interested in access (for example, the settlor who controls a company through a trust company or the beneficiaries of a trust) may submit a reasoned objection via certified email.
The Chamber of Commerce will evaluate, on a case-by-case basis, the exceptional circumstances that justify, in whole or in part, the specific and current denial of differentiated access cited in the request.
Access to the data contained in the register of beneficial owners and trusts by third parties may be excluded in whole or in part based on the assessment by the territorially competent Chamber of Commerce of the exceptional circumstances represented by the interested party.
Reasoned denial of access will be communicated to the applicant via certified email within twenty days of the access request. Failure to notify the applicant within this timeframe will result in access being denied.
The applicant may appeal against the denial of access to the regional administrative court.