Trustees

A. Definition of the reporting entity

The legal business of trust (fideïcomís in Catalan) should be considered in Andorran legal system as a foreign trust, according to UE Directive 2015/849.

In this way, the AML/TF legislation considers as a parties under obligation the persons who have functions as a trustee (fideïcomissari in Catalan) or who hold an equivalent position in legal structures similar to trusts in a professional or non-professional way.

Regarding trustees who exercise in a professional way, the obligations described below are to be read as additional to those corresponding to company services providers and trust. In contrast, non-professional trustees only have to comply with these obligations.

For more information, see the Third additional Provision of Law 14/2017.

B. Obligations of the reporting entity

The main obligations attributed to persons who have functions as a trustee or who hold an equivalent position in legal structures similar to trusts both in a professional or non-professional way in the matter of the prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing are the following:

Maintaining updated information about the trust

The information that is established in the Third additional Provision of Law 14/2017 that this type of parties under obligation should have updated is the following:

The beneficial owners of the trust,
The residence of the trustee or of the analogous figure,
Information regarding any assets held or managed by financial or non-financial party under obligation.

Record keeping

The Andorran legislation establishes a period of conservation of ML/TF related documentation of 5 years. This documentation includes all documents, data and information obtained under Law 14/2017 receipts and registers of operations and transactions, account files and business correspondence.

This documents should be available to communicate it to the competent authorities as soon as it were to be requested.

The UIFAND may further extend the retention period for a maximum period of five additional years, in an individual and reasoned manner.

It is important to note that the obligation to retain all documents, data and information relies on the trustee and must be accomplished even if the trust has been dissolved and liquidated.

For more information, see article 37 of Law 14/2017.

Personal data shall be processed by reporting entities on the basis of Law 14/2017.

Communication of their status

Persons who have functions as a trustee or who hold an equivalent position in legal structures similar to trusts should communicate to the other parties under obligation their status when they establish a new business relationship or when they carry out an occasional transaction with others as well as updated information regarding:

The beneficial owners of the trust,
The residence of the trustee or of the analogous figure,
Information regarding any assets held or managed by financial or non-financial party under obligation.

The fulfilment of this obligation applies to all the business relationships or occasional transactions with other parties under obligation, but it is highly important in situations such as the opening an account or operations involving funds from the trust.