ITALY Trends and Developments Contributed by: Giuseppe Fornari, Enrico Di Fiorino, Emanuele Angiuli and Lorena Morrone, Fornari e Associati
an established professional relationship is ren- dered or the operation is executed” . The entities that must disclose the actual data controller in the company register are: • companies with legal personality: ie, all LLCs (ordinary, simplified, innovative start-ups, among others), joint stock companies and other corporations; • private legal entities (ie, foundations and rec - ognised associations); and • trusts and similar legal institutions. The information must be confirmed every 12 months and any changes that may have occurred must be reported within 30 days. The persons responsible for making the specific disclosure are, respectively: • for corporations, the directors; • for private legal persons, the founders, repre - sentatives or directors; and • for trusts, the trustees. The data that must be communicated concerns entitlement to ownership of the company or the specific body. For example, in the case of com - panies, shares, methods of exercising control, powers of legal representation, administration and management data must be communicated. In this way, the Register will contain all the infor - mation on beneficial ownership of businesses, with the aim of countering illicit activities carried out related to money laundering in the business space. The right of access to the Register, according to Sections 5 to 7 of Ministerial Decree No 55/2022, will be granted by the authorities, to persons pursuant to Section 3 of Legislative Decree No 231/2007 and to the public in different ways. With reference to public access, in particular, on
22 November 2022 the Grand Chamber of the ECJ held in joined cases C-37/20 and C-601/20 that the provision according to which the infor - mation relating to the beneficial owners included in the Register must be accessible to the public (Section 30(5) of the EU’s Fifth Anti-Money Laun - dering Directive) violated the fundamental rights to respect for private life and the protection of citizens’ personal data, which are protected by Articles 7 and 8 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. This principle was incorporated in the pream - ble to the Ministerial Decree of 12 April 2023 (by which the Ministry of Enterprises and Made in Italy (MIMIT)) approved the “technical speci- fications of the electronic format of the single corporate communication” , necessary for the transmission of the data of the beneficial owners to the business register (according to the provi - sions of Section 3(5) of Ministerial Decree No 55/2022). The preamble points out that, in agree - ment with the MEF, Section 7(1) of Ministerial Decree No 55/2022 must be disapplied. Section 7(1) of Ministerial Decree No 55/2022 provides that the first name, surname, month and year of birth and country of residence and citizenship of the beneficial owners are accessible to the public without any kind of limitation. In the course of 2023, two additional Implement - ing Decrees were published: • the MIMT Decree of 16 March 2023 (pub - lished in the Official Gazette on 28 June 2023) and related annex, which define the models for the release of certificates and copies (including digital ones) relating to beneficial ownership information; and • the MIMIT Decree, in agreement with the MEF, of 20 April 2023 (published in the Official Gazette on 28 June 2023) which defines the
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