How to change the beneficial owner in the Estonian Business Register

From 01.09.2018, the management board must submit the list of beneficial owners to the business register.

The concept of beneficial owner

The beneficial owner of a business entity is a natural person who ultimately owns or controls a legal entity through the direct or indirect ownership of a sufficient number of shares, parts, voting rights or ownership rights, including participation in the form of bearer shares or parts, or in any other way. For business entities, data must be submitted to the register about persons who control directly or through other companies at least 25 percent plus one share or part in the company.

Submission methods

1. Through e-business register (https://ettevotjaportaal.rik.ee/). On the business register portal, data on beneficial owners can be submitted only by board members. Only with authorization can someone else do this through a notary.

2. Through an Estonian notary (if the board cannot submit data in the entrepreneur portal, for example, it does not have a valid ID card).

Important

If there is no possibility to submit data through the e-business register, and visiting an Estonian notary is neither possible nor practical, a board member can authorize someone to submit the changes to the register. The power of attorney must be either digitally signed or notarially certified.

Step-by-step process in the entrepreneur portal

1. The board logs into the business register entrepreneur portal with ID card or mobile-ID

2. The home page displays entrepreneurs associated with the logged-in person

3. Click on the link "Beneficial owners not assigned"

4. Assign person(s) from the existing selection or manually enter the following data

5. Press the "Add" button

Added persons are automatically displayed as beneficial owners in the e-business register information system data.

Data to be submitted

• Beneficial owner's name

• Beneficial owner's personal identification code country (in the absence of personal identification code, date and place of birth and country of residence)

• Method of exercising control, i.e., how the beneficial owner controls the company:

* Direct participation

* Indirect participation

* Member of management body

Deadlines and data updates

If the beneficial owner data has changed, the management board must submit the changed data to the business register within 30 days. In addition, the company must confirm the accuracy of beneficial owner data in the annual report going forward, if it has not changed.