According to requirement 2.5.f of the EITI Standard, the beneficial owner of a company is a natural person who directly or indirectly owns or exercises control over a legal entity.

Ukrainian legislation defines that the ultimate beneficial owner (hereinafter -"beneficial owner") is:

The indicators of an individual`s direct decisive influence on the activities of a legal entity is direct ownership of at least 25 per cent of the authorised (share) capital or voting rights of a legal entity. For indirect decisive influence, the same percentage of indirect ownership or exercise of decisive influence in another way

An individual who has a formal right to 25 per cent or more of the share capital or voting rights in a legal entity and acts as a commercial agent, nominee owner or nominee holder, or merely as an intermediary with respect to such right, is not a beneficial owner.

The concept of beneficial owner used for the preparation of EITI reports in the sense provided for by the Law on the Prevention and Counteraction of Legalization (Laundering) of Income.

Ukraine is one of the countries where there is an obligation to disclose information about the beneficial owners of all legal entities during state registration of their creation / changes to information about them in accordance with the Law of Ukraine "On State Registration of Legal Entities, Individuals - Entrepreneurs and Public Organizations".

Such information is included in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, Individual Entrepreneurs and Public Organisations (hereinafter – the “USR”) and must be available online on the official website of the Ministry of Justice and the Unified State Open Data Portal. The same resources contain public information on the members (founders) of all legal entities registered in Ukraine, the amount of the authorised capital of such legal entities and the percentage of shares in the authorised capital owned by their members (founders).

Since March 2022, in connection with russia's military aggression against Ukraine, public access to USR and the possibility to make changes in the normal mode in order to protect the register information from unauthorized actions have been limited.

At the same time, even during this period, access remained possible to the USR on the basis of service contracts in the form of an application program interface (API) concluded with SE "NAIS", which is the technical administrator of the Unified and State Registers.

From December 26, 2022, access to the USR was restored. Information from the USR in electronic form is provided on the condition that the person who wishes to receive such information is identified using the means of a qualified electronic signature.

From May 2023, an applicant identified using a qualified electronic signature can access the information of the Register in electronic form through the portal of electronic services, Portal Diya, as well as using the service in the form of a USR application software interface on the basis of a contract concluded with the technical administrator of this registry.

The information published in the USR does not always fully meet the requirements of the Standard. For example, the information on the country of citizenship, date of birth, place of residence, nature and share of ownership is not always complete, including for technical reasons (e.g. due to heterogeneity and differences in the rules for storing information in the database during different periods of the USR operations).

In addition, the current legislation does not require the disclosure of beneficial ownership information in the USR for representative offices of non-resident entities, Joint Venture Agreements, or Production Sharing Agreements .

In 2022, there was a rule according to which legal entities registered before July 2021 had to submit documents to the state registrar within a year to update information about the beneficial owner in the USR.

Also in July 2022, it was supposed to enter into force requirement for annual confirmation of information about the final beneficial owner. However, due to the introduction of martial law, the updating and annual confirmation of beneficial owner information was postponed, and from December 29, 2022, the obligation to annually confirm information was abolished.

Instead, it was established that legal entities must submit updated information about the ultimate beneficial owner within six months from the date of recruitment. legal acts, which will approve the provisions on the form and content of the ownership structure and the methodology for determining the ultimate beneficial owner by a legal entity, but not earlier than 90 days after the termination or cancellation of martial law in Ukraine.

The form and content of the ownership structure, approved in 2021, provides a schematic representation of the ownership structure of a legal entity, which reflects all persons who directly or indirectly own this person independently or jointly with other persons or regardless of formal ownership have the possibility of significant influence on the management or activity of the legal entity. Samples of drawing up a schematic image of the ownership structure can be found on the official website of the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine under the heading "Financial Monitoring". 6 months from the date of entry into force of the Methodology (October 3, 2023), but no earlier than 90 days from the date of termination or cancellation of martial law in Ukraine.

On December 29, 2022, the Law of Ukraine "On Amendments to Certain Laws of Ukraine on Improving the Regulation of Ultimate Beneficial Ownership and Ownership Structure of Legal Entities" No. 2571-IX entered into force. The specified law was adopted with the aim of simplifying the submission of information about beneficial owners and ownership structure by legal entities entered in the USR and ensuring the entry of reliable data about beneficial owners into the register.

In 2022, the legislation did not provide for the inclusion of information on the ultimate beneficial owners of non-residents who have representative offices in Ukraine in the USR.

In 2022 and 2023, a number of amendments to regulatory acts aimed at eliminating this deficiency were adopted.

In addition, the requirement to enter information about representative offices that were registered before the introduction of the relevant rule into the USR is not addressed. Also, the specified changes do not address the disclosure of beneficial owners of non-resident members of the JVAs, who may not have permanent representation on the territory of Ukraine.

In Ukraine, there are non-state sources of information about the status of influential political figures. For example, the Open Register of National Public Figures of Ukraine, launched by the NGO "Anti-corruption Center". However, in 2022, access to the registry was closed due to martial law.

In 2017, Ukraine took an important step towards increasing transparency – it joined the Global Register of Beneficial Owners and became the first country to officially declare its readiness to provide data on beneficial owners for the register.

In order to establish and develop cooperation in providing information to the register, the Ministry of Justice, the State Agency for of e-governance, Transparency International Ukraine and the OpenOwnership consortium signed a Memorandum of Understanding. The CMU also made amendments to the by-laws that provide for the free transfer of information on beneficial owners to the Global Register of Beneficial Owners.

Information on the beneficial owners of Ukrainian companies contained in the UDR is already partially available in the Global Register of Beneficial Owners, but for correct display and search it will be necessary integration Further transformation of data to achieve full compliance with the Beneficial Ownership Data Standard is identified among the next steps under the Open Government Partnership Initiative in 2020-2021. However, this step has not yet been implemented.

Information about civil servants who are beneficial owners (controllers) of legal entities was available in the Unified State Register of Declarations of Persons Authorized to Perform the Functions of the State or Local Self-Government.

In 2022, the procedure for forming, maintaining and publication (provision) of information from the Unified State Register of Declarations of Persons Authorized to Perform State or Local Self-Government Functions. At the same time, in connection with the introduction of martial law on the territory of Ukraine in 2022, the deadline for submitting declarations was extended. Natural persons received the right to submit declarations within three months after the termination or cancellation of martial law or the state of war, which caused incomplete information in the register for 2022.

In September 2023, a law was adopted that restored electronic declaration and open access (taking into account security measures) to the register of declarations of persons, authorized to perform the functions of the state or local self-government. The law requires persons who in 2022-2023 did not submit a declaration of a person authorized to perform the functions of the state or local self-government to submit such declarations no later than January 31, 2024. occupied territories or where active hostilities are taking place, those who are being treated as a result of injury, etc., as well as family members of the specified persons) the obligation to submit declarations is postponed - no later than 90 days after the change of the conditions that grant the right to postponement.

At the beginning of December 2023, the National Agency on Corruption Prevention opened access to the Unified State Register of Declarations persons authorized to perform functions of the state or local self-government.

Information about owners of 5 percent or more of shares in joint-stock companies is available in the database of issuers posted on the website of the Agency for the Development of the Infrastructure of the Stock Market of Ukraine at the link http://smida.gov.ua/db/emitent. The specified database contains, among other things, information about the stock exchanges on which the shares of all issuers registered in Ukraine are placed.

On 13.05.2022, the NCCPFR suspended the license for the organization of trading products on commodity exchanges of PJSC "Ukrainian Interbank Currency Exchange" until the expiration date martial law As of the date of preparation of this Report, PJSC "Ukrainian Interbank Currency Exchange" has been excluded from the Register, and licenses to conduct activities on the capital markets have been canceled. At the same time, shares of only a small part of Ukrainian issuers are listed on stock exchanges. Among the accountable companies there are only two such companies: