On February 21, the Freedom of Information Center in Armenia together with the Camber of Trade and Industry of RA organized a meeting and discussion on the topic of BO declaration.

From January 1, 2023, all RA legal entities are obliged to identify and declare their beneficial owners. The deadline for submitting the statement is March 1. Administrative and criminal liability is defined for failure to submit the declaration and improper submission.

The purpose of the meeting was to give the representatives of small and medium business the opportunity to jointly discuss the problems related to the declaration of beneficial owners, as well as to address their concerns regarding the declaration procedure to the representative of the State Register of Legal Entities Agency of the RA Ministry of Justice which implements the declaration process.

“The process is new, there are various problems and we, as a structure that protects the interests of the business community and represents them, are organizing this meeting from the point of view of mapping that problems related to the declaration process from the business side and developing joint options for their solution”, – Andranik Aleqsanyan, executive director of RA Chamber of Trade and Industry, mentioned in his speech.

In the first part of the meeting, FOICA researcher Harutyun Tsatryan presented the results of the research project on “The impact of the BO declaration on the private sector” carried out with the support of the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE). Based on the example of the media business, the authors of the research, Shushan Doydoyan and Harutyun Tsaturyan, mapped the main problems that the business sector is dealing with in the BO declaration process and analyzed the attitude of legal entities regarding BO transparency and its main reasons.

Taking into account the fact that the majority of the participants are preparing to submit a declaration of beneficial owners for the first time, in the second part of the meeting, the participants had the opportunity to address their concerns to Hripsime Iskandaryan, the representative of the authorized body implementing the declaration process, the Agency of the State Register of Legal Entities of the RA Ministry of Justice.

Ms. Iskandaryan presented the stages of the declaration procedure, suggested where to find guidance materials related to the topic, answered the questions of the attendees. Answers to the questions related to the declaration can be found in the relevant section of the official website of the State Register. It is possible to get acquainted with the declaration procedure through the specially prepared video-guides.

Many of the participants were interested in the issues related to deadlines. some of them have already sent a power od attorney to the State Register Agency but they have not received confirmation yet. Ms. Iskandaryan assured that if due to the overloading of the Agency, the structures submitting the declaration by March 1st do not the approval of the power of attorney, then they will be given additional time to submit the declaration.

Taking into account the difficulties of participation of regional representatives in the meetings organized in Yerevan, the Freedom of Information Center in Armenia will soon hold an online meeting in cooperation of with the Goris Press Club, giving the representatives of remote regions the opportunity to receive answers to their pressing questions related to the topic.

The discussion was organized within the framework of the project “Corruption undermines the Development of Beneficiary Transparency” implemented FOICA and financed by the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE).