Estonia has one of the world’s most transparent business environments. This helps ensure Estonian companies can be trusted worldwide, even though they can be run entirely online from anywhere by Estonians and e-residents.

A key part of this transparency is ensuring it’s clear who controls each and every company. As an Estonian company director, you are legally obliged to declare the persons benefiting from your company’s activities, the so-called ‘beneficial owners’. This must be done by everyone after starting a company through Unicount, as well as updated within 30 days whenever there is a change to your company’s beneficial owners. The obligation entered into force on 1 September 2018 and arises from Chapter 9 of the Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Prevention Act.

In the case of a private limited company (osaühing) with one founder and member of the board, as a rule, the sole beneficial owner is the founder and the sole owner, unless one acts as a nominee shareholder and director.

How to declare beneficial owners via Business Register

When you register an Estonian company through Unicount, you are expected to complete this process within a reasonable period.

This is how you do it:

First, log into the Estonian Business Register here and click on My undertakings.

On the next page, you’ll see an overview of your companies. Find the company you would like to access. Click on the company name to open the company view. Then find beneficial owners section and click on the button to Add/Change beneficial owners.

In the Beneficial owners view click on + Add a beneficial owner.

Now fill in the personal details form of the beneficial owner. Use Estonian e-resident personal identification codes if the beneficial owner is e-resident. When done click Save.

For the manner of excercising control add direct ownership if the beneficial owner is a shareholder and indirect ownership if there is a holding company controlled by beneficial owner that owns the shares of the Estonian company.

Now click Next if you have added all beneficial owners. On the next page click Submit button after reviewing the information you are to submit.

That’s it. Your company’s beneficial owners are now recorded in the Estonian Business Register.

You can find more detailed instructions here.