Private companies’ beneficial owners search fee at Sh600

Kenyans will pay Sh600 to search for beneficial owners of private companies in the latest effort by the government to increase revenue collection in a process, that has the potential to expose the wealth and stakes entrepreneurs hold in their businesses.

Through a legal notice, the fee was introduced by Attorney-General Justin Muturi in October last year by amending the Companies (Beneficial Ownership Information) Regulations of 2020.

“The Second Schedule to the principal regulations is amended by inserting the following new fee —beneficial ownership search request Sh600,” said Mr Muturi in the latest notice.

The principal regulations, which were gazetted by former Attorney-General Kihara Kariuki in February 2020, only prescribed a fee of Sh500 for a notice of ceasing to be a beneficial owner.

The Business Registration Service (BRS) Director-General Kenneth Gathuma could not be reached for comment on Monday, but the new fee signals a plan by the State to make beneficial ownership information accessible by the public.

This is because the 2020 regulations state that beneficial ownership information cannot be accessed by the public, but opening up the portal could provide the State with a fresh revenue stream from those seeking to know the investors behind specific firms.

Read: Half of private companies fail to disclose ownership

This comes three years after former President Uhuru Kenyatta’s regime gave all companies a period of six month running from January 2021 to July 2021 to reveal their beneficial owners. The push for disclosure of beneficial owners came after the State, through the Business Registration Service (BRS), operationalised the Beneficial Ownership E-Register in October 2020 in line with the Companies Act, 2015.

A beneficial owner of a company is described as an individual with control over an express trust or on whose behalf an undertaking takes place.

Beneficial owners are required to provide their personal details including their names, national identity number, Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) PIN, phone number, occupation and home address.

Read: Firms hiding true owners to be struck off companies register

Despite the threat of fines of up to Sh500,000 for failure to register their beneficial owners, the progress of the registration programme, which is being undertaken by BRS, has been slow.

Data from the agency shows only 43.05 per cent of the private firms had declared their business ownership status at the end of June 2023.

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