House to debate Companies Bill

THE House of Representatives will debate the Companies Amendment Bill 2018 when it sits on March 8.

There are no sittings of the House or Senate this week.

The bill was introduced in the House last November by Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi. The purpose of the bill is to amend 11 clauses of the Companies Act.

One of the amendments would require a company, within a year of this act coming into force and regularly afterwards, to ascertain all the beneficial owners holding an interest in it. The amendment will also look at whether the person held the interest prior to or after the act came into force.

The bill also states it would be an offence for a company not to take all reasonable steps to ascertain and obtain this information and knowingly and recklessly file a return with the registrar. In such circumstances, a company, its directors and officers would be liable on summary conviction to a fine of $10,000, imprisonment for three years and an additional $300 fine for every day the offence continues.

Every person who acquires a beneficial interest in the shares of a company, and whose name is not entered in the register of members of the company as a shareholder, is required to make a statutory declaration within 30 days of acquiring that interest. That declaration is supposed to include the particulars of the person in whose name the shares are registered in the company's books, the date on which the beneficial interest was created and other particulars which may be prescribed.

Failure to submit such a declaration is an offence. On summary conviction an offender is liable to a fine of $10,000, imprisonment for three years and an additional $300 fine for every day the offence continues.