The new PSC regime has now been running for a couple of years and I thought I’d got my head around it but I see form a number of new company registrations that maybe I haven’t.
One of the PSC requirements is:
Now, I may be being stupid here, but surely this means that if someone holds, say, all of the shares in a company, they are, by definition, a PSC?
And surely Companies House would realise that, if a newly formed company declares one shareholder owning all the shares, they must be the de facto PSC?
And yet that doesn’t appear to be the case.
Take for example, three newly formed companies, all of whom have named Hema Noronha (about whom I have written before, see, for example: Are they taking the PSC?) as both their director and shareholder.
They are:
- MXT TRANS LTD – Company number 11512322
- WAYLORD EXPORT LIMITED – Company number 11512318
- B1 PROJECTS LTD – Company number 11512327
All of them have Ms Noronha as director and all of them show her as the only shareholder. And all of them declare that “The company knows or has reason to believe that there will be no registrable Person with Significant Control or Relevant Legal Entity (RLE) in relation to the company.”
Which seems to be in direct contradiction to the condition 5 (i) stated above.
And yet Companies House appears to happily accept these statements even though they seem contradictory.
Am I missing something?
Hiding in plain sight - my search for money launderers 