Key Notes on Cayman Islands Companies (Amendment) Law, 2019

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The Cayman Islands Government has passed a number of amendment laws which came into effect on August 8, 2019 to strengthen Cayman's anti-money laundering and counter-financing of terrorism regime. The following are the highlights of the amendments:

(a) voting rights (and need to specify whether the rights are conditional or not) in respect of each shareholder must be recorded in the register of members of the company;

(b) with immediate effect, companies are now required to notify the Cayman Registrar of Companies of any change to their register of directors and officers within 30 days of the change (previously was within 60 days);

(c) the penalties for failure to create or maintain a Register of beneficial ownership have been increased to CI $25,000 for a first offence, CI $100,000 for a second offence, and the company will be struck off by direction of the court for a third offence. Failure to comply with any notice or to provide information under the beneficial ownership legislation will, on conviction, incur a fine of CI $25,000 for a first offence and CIS$50,000 (or two years' imprisonment) for a second or subsequent offence.

In addition, with effect from 1 October 2019, the names of the current directors and alternate directors of all Cayman companies are to be publicly available from the Registrar on the payment of a fee of CI $50.  The information available is limited to the names of the current directors and alternate directors, the information do not carry any other personal details such as nationality, residential address or date of birth. A search may be conducted in relation to a specific company only and may only be made in person at the offices of the Registrar. 

We attach the template of register of members for your reference. Please return the updated register of members for your Cayman companies to us by December 31, 2019.

We will need time to file at our Cayman office. For any company default in complying, and for every director or manager of the company who has wilfully authorised or permitted such a default, a penalty of USD 6100 will be imposed. 

Please ensure you have passed the Register of beneficial ownership to us for filing, and send us the updated Register whenever there is any changes to the beneficial ownership. The penalty is specified in the above.