Fun fact, Estonia’s commercial register is still available and, as far as I can tell, never had anything to do with complying with EU regulation, but was completely internally legislated.
Similar to the US federal law vs. states, one not enforcing it anymore doesn’t necessarily mean that the rest won’t keep doing it.
I tried searching up some examples of subsidiaries of larger companies and the 'Beneficial Owners' section doesn't actually contain who ultimately owns the company.
Toyota Baltic has a shareholder and beneficial owner listed, which seems to be compliant.
SIA Toyota Material Handling is the registration of a foreign company (Latvia), and says beneficial owner information isn’t required, presumably because it’s up to their home country to get that data.
Eesti Toyota lists their board members as beneficial owners. If you note their areas of activity it’s “Associations and social clubs related to recreational activities, entertainment, cultural activities or hobbies”, so I’d say not actually related to Toyota like you thought.
Huh the last linked company does appear to be purely recreational. Though of course it's still not ultimately owned by just those three, unless Estonian 'Associations and social clubs' are very different from what I understand.
I'm surprised Toyota HQ would let them use their name on official documents if it's completely unrelated.
For Toyota Baltic, obviously the sole listed board member is not the 'Ultimate Beneficial Owner' or even any 'Beneficial Owner' since Toyota Baltic is a legally controlled subsidiary of a much much larger company.
Which the board member does not own, nor are they likely to be the sole beneficial owner of any intermediate holding company.
The 'Beneficial Owner' is very very likely just a legal representative.
Quedtion: What exactly is public in EU/Estonia? E.g. in Switzerland, one can see share holders of limited companies (GmbH) but not for Aktiengesellschaft (public companies).
Making finding of the companies owned by Russian oligarch basically impossible.
Regular pedestrians can no longer find the info, while gov agencies / bureaucrats have no interest.
As usual, (un)intended consequences.
It is a difficult question, because on one side, sure it is very useful for citizen to have access to these info. But on the other side, I was always stunned that just because owning or operating a company, all your private info had to be public. These kind of registers are very bad for privacy rights.
In all case, the worst thing with this decision about the UBO is that a lot of money laundering regulation and co force company to check UBO of customer and provider companies and it is complicated to request that all the time from companies themselves and ensure that the statement are truthfull.
I don't think people have a natural right to create a legal entity that shields them from consequences, so I think it's fine for society to add conditions.
I think a reasonable compromise with privacy would be to remove the residential address and ID number, but keep name, DOB, and nationality.
Why should a person be forced to give their name? Plenty of HN users run internet businesses. Doesn't it suck that to deliver a service for anyone online commercially you have to dox yourself? Some of the best things in the world have been made by people who aren't willing to part with that information.
Sort of, in that the court's role is to be the authoritative interpreter of EU law, and EU law crosses national borders by definition.
But all domestic law in EU member states must comply with EU law, so the court can rule on domestic law insofar as it is to determine compatibility with EU law.
One of the stupid rulings in favor of EU oligarchs. Yes, EU oligarchs not Russian ones. They hide behind corporate entities, shell companies, shady legal operations and they claim GDPR for everything.
Nowadays it’s very difficult to find out who is behind every company, but there’s an easy way to do it without violating sensitive info. Just publish the name(s) of the real owner without any other personal data (address, phone, DOB and so on).
It means the rich and corrupt people (they're lawyers) use the EU's strong data protection regulations to hide from the public knowing the extent of their wealth, businesses and influence.
The EU is going dramatically overboard with privacy rights (aka GDPR). It's causing a lot of dont-talk-to-your-neighbor-because-you-might-break-privacy-laws issues, and causing prices to rise across the board.
Maybe partly, but I'm pretty sure it's grassroots. The tech community loves privacy and is willing to accept large amounts of cost and inconvenience for it, to the point of many appearing to view tech as a net negative due to the spying.
The great majority of people in general, myself included, seem to not care about privacy all that much, although they say they do, and at least I personally care about right to encrypt and truthful advertising.
The tech community is different though. And public perception of GDPR is heavily influenced by tech bloggers, hardly anyone else thinks or talks about this stuff.
Could be all about old money, but programmers sure seem to love it.
>It's causing a lot of dont-talk-to-your-neighbor-because-you-might-break-privacy-laws issues
Well that's explicitly out of scope of the GDPR, so it shouldn't cause those issues.
Article 2(2):
>This Regulation does not apply to the processing of personal data [...] by a natural person in the course of a purely personal or household activity
and even if that wasn't the case, unless you're performing automated processing or using a filing system, it's out of scope due to Article 2(1) as well.
Because the EU, and specifically the Court of Justice in this instance, believes in having a strong human rights framework where the right to privacy is vital.
Similar to the US federal law vs. states, one not enforcing it anymore doesn’t necessarily mean that the rest won’t keep doing it.
https://ariregister.rik.ee/eng