The Parliament has voted in the second reading on the draft law annulling the offshore secret

The document provides for amending the Law on the state registration of legal entities and individual entrepreneurs. Its main provisions refer to the obligation of the Public Services Agency to ensure public availability of the information from the State Register regarding actual beneficiaries on the resources and platforms that publish open data about companies.

Dumitru Alaiba, the chair of the Commission for Economy, Budget, and Finance, one of the authors of the draft law, explained that this legislative initiative aims to remove from anonymity the actual beneficiaries of offshore companies. “This initiative has a great potential to prevent major corruption by promoting transparency in society, ensuring and fully guaranteeing the constitutional right of the citizens to information of public interest. Information about the founders, administrators, and beneficiaries of the companies registered in Moldova is of public interest, and any restriction of this information is a violation of the constitutional right of our citizens to free access to information of public interest,” the explanatory note to the initiative says.

Over 500 companies falling under this draft law are registered in Moldova.