The Action on “Promoting Transparency and Action against Economic Crime” supported the Financial Intelligence Service (SFIS) and the National Bank of the Kyrgyz Republic (NBKR) in their efforts to enhance transparency of the beneficial owners of legal entities and legal arrangements through organising three training activities on “Beneficial Ownership and Transparency of Legal Entities” in Bishkek on 25-28 April 2023.

The activity brough together 93 representatives of the SFIS, the NBKR and financial institutions, commercial banks, non-banking financial institutions and the designated non-financial businesses and professions (DNFPBs).

The training activities helped the representatives of Kyrgyz institutions to improve their knowledge of beneficial ownership and enhance their skills in identifying beneficial ownership through case studies and breakout sessions. The participants learned the requirements of approaches in collecting information on beneficial ownership; procedures for identifying beneficial ownership; the challenges in obtaining information; the typologies of misuse of legal persons, and recent developments adopted in other jurisdictions. Moreover, the financial monitoring entities increased their understanding of liability to send a qualitative suspicious transaction report relating to beneficial ownership to the Financial Intelligence Unit. The presented good practices in Anti-Money Laundering and Combating Financing of Terrorism enriched the supervision skills of the national regulatory authorities.

This activity was organised by the Action on “Promoting Transparency and Action against Economic Crime” of the Central Asia Rule of Law Programme 2020-2023, a joint initiative co-funded by the European Union and the Council of Europe and implemented by the Council of Europe.