The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has released its guidance on Best Practices on Beneficial Ownership for Legal Persons. It their executive summary, FATF states that: "The results of FATF Mutual Evaluations indicate that jurisdictions find it challenging to achieve a satisfactory level of transparency regarding the beneficial ownership of legal persons." The guidance seeks to provide solutions to the implementation of FATF Recommendations on AML/CFT.  According to the Guidance, "countries should use one or more of mechanisms (the Registry Approach, the Company Approach and the Existing Information Approach) to ensure that information on the beneficial ownership of a company is obtained by that company and available at a specified location in their country; or can be otherwise determined in a timely manner by a competent authority."   

The guidance also seeks to address the favorable use of a multi-pronged approach to Beneficial Ownership; the keys to an effective system; latest developments and case examples; and suggestions for "ensuring authorities can access getting information on beneficial ownership of overseas entities".

The guidance can be found here.