The U.S. Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has issued its final rule to establish the country's first-ever beneficial ownership information-reporting regime, as it was required to do by the Corporate Transparency Act of 2019 (CTA).

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has unveiled a "Notice of Proposed Rulemaking" (NPRM) that it said is aimed at informing stakeholders of its plans to proceed with implementing new beneficial ownership information reporting provisions that are contained in the so-called Corporate Transparency Act (CTA), part of a recent Congressional revision to existing U.S. anti-money laundering laws, which empowers FinCEN to create and manage a national register of beneficial ownership information. 

In spite of some determined opposition to beneficial ownership registers around the world – on grounds that they put the personal details of the individuals whose names appear on them at risk of being stolen, or otherwise illegally made use of – governments have also been introducing them more and more in recent years, in response to mounting pressure on them to address criminal activities such as money-laundering, tax evasion and fraud, as well as to avoid ending up on “tax haven blacklists”.