Irina Otrokhova

The past year brought significant changes to Hong Kong corporate administrators. Since 2018, provision of corporate services and nominal services has become licensed, and the Registrar of Companies has become responsible for issuing licenses.

On 26 June 2015, Directive EU 2015/849 on the prevention of the use of the financial system for the purposes of money laundering or terrorist financing (Directive EU 2015/849) entered into force.

A few years ago, the procedure of opening a bank account for business was not unusual and was not associated with any complex procedures. Relations between businesses and banks were based on trustworthy partnership, but in recent years the world has changed a lot.

The principle of ‘Substance over Legal Form’ is central to the faithful representation and reliability of information contained in the financial statements. The key point of the concept is that a transaction should not be recorded in such a manner as to hide the true intent of the transaction, [...]