Off-shore companies to be obliged to unveil their official founders in Moldova

Companies operating in Moldova but registered in off-shore zones will be obliged to unveil their official founders, according to an action plan drafted by the Finance Ministry.

The ministry specified that «the unveiled information, regardless of the results, will not serve as a reason for revoking the licence or for other penalties». These new regulations will give the possibility to other institutions to intervene in line with their competences and to act for the benefit of consumers, it said. The institutions that will be entitled to intervene are the Interior Ministry, the National Anti-Corruption Centre, the State Fiscal Inspectorate, the Customs Service and the Competition Council.

The companies risk to lose their licence or to be sanctioned if they do not make public the names of their official founders.

The plan drafted by the Finance Ministry provides for measures maximizing transparency in the fields of the national economy such as the banking sector, financial non-banking sector, media, and energy. The document was elaborated on the basis of the activity of the working group set by an order of Prime Minister Vlad Filat of 26 October, aiming to combat corruption and tax evasion, to eliminate phenomena favouring underground economy.

According to the study «The Price of Offshore Revisited», made and presented publically in the middle of 2012 by the group Tax Justice Network, in 1994-2010, almost 2 billion dollars was taken out of Moldova, if incomes from investments hidden in fiscal paradises are added. The total amount of the capital which was unofficially transferred from Moldova could cover about 43 per cent of the external debt in 2010, which stood at 4.6 billion dollars.

Adapted from Moldpres