The declaration of the Beneficial Owner of our corporate customer – legal entities is part of the "Know your Customer" process and is carried out in accordance with the applicable regulatory and institutional framework.
The Declaration of the company’s Beneficial Owner can be made either through Digital Banking for businesses or at your local branch, and is required in Digital Banking when applying for specific products (e.g. opening a sight account, obtaining a POS, etc.) as well as for carrying out specific transactions (e.g. SEPA instant Payments, outgoing remittances).
Once you've logged in to Digital Banking with the corporate user codes you've received from the Bank, the declaration of the Beneficial Owner can be made in the "User Details" section. In addition, the declaration and control of the legal entities’ Beneficial Owners is done during the application process for Online Legalization through Digital Banking (where a relevant Solemn Declaration document form should be uploaded).
Beneficial Owner
The beneficial owner is defined as the natural person or persons to whom the company belongs or who control(s) it, by holding or controlling directly or indirectly a sufficient percentage of company shares or voting rights or other ownership rights, including, inter alia, through non-registered shares or control through other means.
An individual holding more than 25% of the company’s share capital or ownership rights is considered to have direct control of the company.
A company holding more than 25% of the company’s share capital or ownership rights is considered to have indirect control of the company if the former is controlled by an individual or individuals or more companies controlled by the same individual(s).
The meaning of Beneficial Owner has been established by law and is described in detail in Article 3(17) of Law 4557/2018 on the “Prevention and suppression of money laundering and terrorist financing (transposing Directive 2015/849/EU) and other provisions” (Government Gazette A 139/30.7.2018), as amended by Article 2(2) of Law 4734/2020 (Government Gazette A 196/8.2.2020).
As an exception to the above, the option to declare a Legal Entity as a Beneficial Owner is provided exclusively for subsidiaries of domestic or foreign companies whose beneficial owner is a listed company (in a regulated market or Multilateral Trading Mechanism) in Greece or abroad.
More specifically, by virtue of decisions 67343 EX 2019/19.06.2019 (Government Gazette B 2443), and 73900 EX 2019 /02.07.2019 (Government Gazette B 2718) of the Minister of Finance, a parent domestic (or foreign) company listed on a regulated market subject to disclosure requirements, in accordance with EU law or equivalent international standards that ensure effective transparency with regards to the beneficial owner or company trading in a Multilateral Trading Facility and subject to disclosure requirements equivalent to those of the regulated market, can be declared to the Bank as the Beneficial Owner of a domestic or foreign company.
The above accepted regulated markets are specified as follows:
- ATHEX
- EU Member State Stock Exchange
- Stock exchange of country with equivalent obligations (the list of these countries is subject to change, but today includes the stock exchanges of: USA, Hong Kong, Australia, Switzerland, United Kingdom)
Declaration of the Beneficial Owner Form
You can find the standard form for the declaration of the beneficial owners of your business at the following link. You can submit it either at your local branch or online, through Digital Banking for Businesses and the Online Legalization service.
Note that the document is editable and, if you need to add other beneficial owners, you can do so by modifying the respective fields. Please note that in order to complete the processing of your request, it is necessary to list all Beneficial Owners, and to fill in all the required fields for each person, including their percentage shareholding.