Finding a company’s name is easy. But is it always easy to discover the person truly standing behind it? The Business Registers Agency (APR) is introducing an annual verification of beneficial owners. Who will have to verify the data, why is this being done, and how can this register prevent real owners from hiding behind a whole chain of companies?
Under the Law on the Central Register of Beneficial Owners, companies are obliged to submit data within one year of their last registration. The obligation to submit data also applies to entities where there were no ownership changes over the past 365 days, and the deadline is not the same for all entities.
Jelena Čukić from the Business Registers Agency explains that the main point of verification is that anyone who has been “quiet” – i.e., has not had any changes in the Central Register within a year – now has a 30-day window to check the data that has been registered.
“In other words, to contact the founder and the founder’s founder, which is important in complicated ownership structures, and to check whether the data has been properly recorded and whether there is perhaps some new document that should now be uploaded to the Central Register of Beneficial Owners to confirm the status of the recorded beneficial owner,” Čukić states.
This obligation also applies to companies, associations, endowments, foundations, and branches and representative offices of foreign companies.
Data important for tracking financial flows
Jasmina Radovanović from NALED points out that it is very important to understand that beneficial owners are not just those companies registered as owners of a firm in Serbia.
“That can be a company from abroad, which in turn can have its own founder—another company from a third country. Therefore, that ownership chain needs to be traced right back to the beginning, to the physical person who has a direct or indirect stake in both the capital and decision-making. This is very important both for the competent authorities monitoring money flows, for banks working with clients, and for investors who want to get to know the business partners we work with,” Radovanović points out.
Prison sentences also envisaged
The law provides for penalties for those who avoid entering data on beneficial owners. Misdemeanour fines for companies range from 500,000 to two million dinars, while for responsible persons within companies, they range from 50,000 to 150,000 dinars. Alongside misdemeanour fines, the law also provides for prison sentences of six months to five years.
Jasmina Radovanović says that these penalty provisions are in themselves warnings for those who may not yet have completed everything related to registration, and especially for those who need to verify this data.
“It is very important to see that the competent authorities tasked with cross-referencing this data – both banks and relevant institutions – are checking the records themselves, and if they determine that discrepancies exist, they should contact the APR to reconcile and check this data. And then initiate the appropriate proceedings – whether misdemeanour or criminal,” Radovanović points out.
There are 173,000 entities entered into the Central Register of Beneficial Owners, but this is not the final figure.
(RTS, 29.09.2026)
https://www.rts.rs/vesti/drustvo/6050556/apr-vlasnici-firmi-provera-podataka.html