The amendments in the Measures Against Money Laundering Act (MAMLA) entered into force on May 10, 2019 and have the purpose to relieve the business from unnecessary administrative obligations.

The alterations were made with the Transitional and concluding provisions of the Act for Amendment and Supplement of the Weapons, Ammunition, Explosive Substances and Pyrotechnic Products Act, promulgated in the State Gazette 37 in May 7, 2019.

These are the following:

Under the new amendments in Art. 63, para. 5 the companies shall not identify their real owners. Before the amendments the Legal Act exempted from this obligation only the companies in whose lot in the Commercial register are registered the natural persons who own them.
The new provision provides that if one company is owned by one or more companies, it shall not be required to file a declaration in case the natural persons who are its real owners are registered in the lot of the legal entities, which own it.
In case one of the legal entities which own the company is foreign, the identification of the real owners shall be obligatory.

The other amendment is related with the so-called Internal Rules Against Money Laundering for which many obliged persons were obliged to send to the State Agency for National Security.
Now the written above obligation to send internal rules is repealed. The new requirement is the internal rules to be in compliance with MAMLA. As the term for this is 6 months from the publication of the results of the national risk assessment on the State Agency for National Security website.

These amendments were made in § 6 of the Transitional and concluding provisions of MAMLA, which first paragraph already provides: “Persons under Art. 4, for who the obligation for application of measures against money laundering has occurred by the enforcement of this act shall comply their internal rules in compliance with the requirements of Art. 101 within 6 months from the publication of the results of the national risk assessment on the website of the State Agency for National Security. Concerning the publication of the results a message to the mass media shall be sent.”