The register had been released in early January, after a decision of the EU Court of Justice had made access to the general public illegal, in the name of respect for privacy.
by decoders
The Ministry of the Economy announced, Thursday, January 19 In a press release that access to the register of effective beneficiaries for the general public had been temporarily restored, almost three weeks after his interruption, officially” for technical reasons “.
This platform , open in April 2021, allowed any citizen to easily know the identity of the owners of French companies; It was considered a major advance in financial transparency and the fight against fraud and money laundering. In July 2022, the weekly L’Obs, associated with a collective of independent journalists, had for example used this information to reveal that sixty personalities involved in corruption cases or targeted by sanctions had invested massively in the ‘ French real estate.
But these data suddenly disappeared from the register in the early hours of 2023, as noted Mo12345lemonde. Before deploring a technical dysfunction, the National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI), which ensures technical management of the register, had provided to the world, on January 4 that the data of the effective beneficiaries would now be “no longer published in Open Data “Due to” a decision from the European Court of Justice “. A reference to the judgment of November 22, 2022 of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), which declared illegal access by the general public to the European registers of effective beneficiaries, in the name of respect for privacy.
Future access methods “defined soon”
This decision had already led eight European countries to suddenly suspend access to their registers (the Netherlands, Ireland, Malta, Cyprus, Germany, Belgium, Austria and Luxembourg). A blow for many actors from civil society, who use this data to document financial crimes.
This decision by Minister Bruno Le Maire is only provisional, “while waiting to draw all the consequences of the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union” of November 2022, specifies the press release from Bercy . “Future terms of access to the data register of the actual beneficiaries taking into account the CJEU decision will be defined soon, in connection with the stakeholders” explains the ministry, while ensuring that “[the] press bodies and [ Civil society organizations having a legitimate interest “will be able to continue accessing the register.