Wise Nuqud Ltd, daughter UAE company of the British company Wise (ex Transferwise), a licenced money service provider in the UAE, has been fined $360,000 (Dh1.32 million) for not following anti-money laundering norms. The Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) of the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) found that Wise did not establish and maintain adequate […]

The reform is a result of recent amendments to the BVI Business Companies Act 2004, which comes into force on that date. Companies have been required to file their directors’ details with the Commission since 2016, but the names have not so far been made publicly available. However, the new legislation provides some safeguards. Searches […]

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) Ministry of Economy has issued a directive requiring payments for real estate transactions through virtual assets or cash amounts above AED55,000 to be reported to the country’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU). All real estate agents, brokers and law firms are now obliged to file reports to the FIU for purchase […]

The FATF voted to place Malta under enhanced monitoring in June 2021. The decision surprised the country’s government in light of the positive assessment of Malta by the Council of Europe’s MONEYVAL just a month earlier. In this report, the jurisdiction is rated as fully compliant with 12 of the 40 FATF recommendations and substantially […]

HMRC is consulting on the scope of a proposal to extend the existing investment manager exemption (IME) to include crypto-assets. The IME exemption specifies the types of investment transactions that UK-based managers of collective investment arrangements can conduct on behalf of non-UK resident investors without bringing them into the scope of UK taxation. It includes […]

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has issued new risk-based guidance based on the results of its recent consultation on anti-money laundering (AML) in the real estate sector. FATF’s assessments show that the real estate sector often has ‘a poor level of understanding’ of these risks and fails to mitigate them. Vulnerabilities include exploitation by […]

The Federal Ministry of Finance of Germany has issued a circular giving legally binding guidance on the income tax treatment of virtual currencies and other tokens. The guidance, issued jointly with the federal states’ supreme tax authorities, is the first nationwide and uniform administrative advice to be made available on the topic. It covers not […]

Panama’s Executive Decree No. 13 of 2022 (Decreto Ejecutivo No. 13 de 2022), published at the end of March 2022, has set out new regulations for lawyers and law firms acting as resident agents for legal entities in Panama. The regulation amends Law No. 129 of 2020 (Ley No. 129 de 2020), governing the registration […]

Canada’s 2022 federal budget proposes to deter the shifting of Canadian-controlled private corporations (CCPCs) to foreign jurisdictions to avoid tax on investment income. Department of Finance Canada says that some business owners are manipulating their CCPC status to avoid paying the additional refundable corporate income tax that they would otherwise pay on investment income earned […]

The United Arab Emirates has earned a reputation as a practically tax-free jurisdiction and, due to this, continues to attract businessmen from all over the world. The news about the introduction of a corporate tax at the level of 9% stirred up the business world, because the previously tax-free jurisdiction introduces a tax on company […]