The Cayman Islands Government recently passed the Beneficial Ownership Transparency Regulations (2024) expanding the scope of the previous regime and now also now includes previously exempt investment fund vehicles.

Read our overview of the key updates here.

Scrutiny on offshore transactions and their participants is at an all-time high. Through an ever growing number of regulations and laws, parties to transactions and third party providers from banks to corporate service providers are required to gather and, in some circumstances, share information with governments and regulatory authorities.     For the underlying officers and […]

The Cayman Islands Monetary Authority’s (CIMA’s) Rule on Corporate Governance for Regulated Entities (Rule) and Statement of Guidance on Internal Controls for Regulated Entities (Guidance) comes into effect on 14 October 2023. The Rule and Guidance will replace the existing corporate governance regulatory measures. All CIMA regulated entities will be required to take action to ensure compliance.

In order to ensure compliance with the BVI’s anti-money laundering regime, Approved Managers are required to appoint a money laundering reporting officer (MLRO) and implement appropriate policies and procedures for adoption on an ongoing basis.

Regulators are taking firm action again non-compliance with AML and CFT regulations as highlighted by these recent enforcement cases in Hong Kong and BVI.

Reminder to BVI companies on ongoing maintenance of accounting records and related official documentation detail

Under the BVI Companies Act (Revised) and the Mutual Legal Assistance (Tax Matters) Act (Revised) a BVI company and the registered agent are required to have knowledge of the location of accounting records and also the person responsible for the keeping of such records.

Furthermore, all BVI companies will be required to file an annual financial return with their registered agent to be retained for record-keeping purposes, commencing from their 2023 financial year. 

The Monetary Authority (Administrative Fines) (Amendment) Regulations, 2020 was enacted on 26 June 2020 extending the ability of the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority (CIMA) to impose significant fines.

It is now also an offence for knowingly or wilfully supplying false or misleading information to the Cayman Islands Tax Information Authority (TIA).

FATCA: BVI, Bermuda and Cayman Islands – The IRS has provided for an extension of time for Model 1 IGA jurisdictions to provide their 2019 FATCA data to the United States competent authority. Currently the deadline…

NEW Cayman Islands CRS Compliance Form…

The Economic Substance (Companies and Limited Partnerships) Act, 2018 came into force on 1 January 2019 requiring British Virgin Islands companies and limited partnerships that are tax resident and carrying out ‘Relevant Activities’ to demonstrate economic substance. The new legislation, which applies to existing and new BVI entities, was introduced to address the concerns of the EU Code of Conduct Group and the OECD Forum on Harmful Tax Practices regarding economic substance.

This summary replaces our original release of 11 January 2019 and updates from 31 May 2019 and 16 July 2019 (respectively) to provide a consolidated overview of the key aspects of the legislation and guidance.

This summary replaces our previous releases of 21 December 2018 and 11 March 2019 and provides an updated overview of the key aspects of the legislation by outlining steps to identify which Cayman entities are in scope and how to achieve compliance.