Recital 126

(126) Difficulties in obtaining the information should not be a valid reason to avoid the identification effort and resort to reporting the senior management instead. Therefore, legal entities should always be able to substantiate their doubts as to the veracity of the information collected. Such justification should be proportionate to the risk of the legal entity and the complexity of its ownership structure. In particular, the record of the actions taken should be promptly provided to competent authorities where required and, on a risk-sensitive basis, it should be possible for that record to include resolutions of the board of directors and minutes of their meetings, partnership agreements, trust deeds, informal arrangements determining powers equivalent to powers of attorney or other contractual agreements and documentation. In cases where the absence of beneficial owners is evident with respect to the specific form and structure of legal entity, the justification should be understood as a reference to that fact, namely that the legal entity does not have a beneficial owner due to its specific form and structure. Such absence of beneficial owners could arise, where, for example, there are no ownership interests in the legal entity or where the legal entity cannot be ultimately controlled by other means.

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Source: EUR-Lex CELLAR · retrieved 2026-09-04 · Text as adopted (Official Journal); later amendments are not incorporated in this text.