E.U company without public registry?

[tomboy]

Hi,
Is it possible to incorporate a EU company without public register? Is there a country inside EU that does not have a public register?
For privacy reasons, I don’t want my name to appear as the owner of the company.

 

[Gediminas]

For privacy reasons, I don’t want my name to appear as the owner of the company.

Hey, if this is just for this reason, you can always use nominees service to protect your identity from the public registry.

 

[tomboy]

I’m not really comfortable with nominees. Afterwards, opening a bank account will also be a problem. Bank always see it as something suspicious .

 

[Sols]

No, it is not possible without using nominees. Some jurisdictions (IIRC Sweden, NL, Belgium) have corporate entities whose shareholders are private or quasi-private, but this is changing with public UBO registers. It's difficult and time consuming to get documents out of some jurisdictions, such as Bulgaria and Gibraltar (which, for now, is still EU but be mindful of Brexit).

The closest you can get is probably Switzerland, where shareholders of companies companies formed as AG/SA are not publicly disclosed. This does not apply to GmbH/Sàrl companies.

Banking shouldn't be a problem if you work with good nominees, who have good relationships with banks. Take Cyprus as an example. Your chances of opening a bank account in might even increase if you use professional directors and nominee shareholders. The drawback is you're limited to the banks your nominees work with.

 

[NicolasMaduro]

Correct me if I´m wrong, but I think the Latvian business registry is kinda private. Don´t think its that easy to obtain owner and director information, without going trough hassles like writing an email or paying for the information. So in this case its fine in regards to staying anonymous against the consumer.

 

[randomname11]

I looked into the same before and I think the best you can get, is countries where you have to pay to obtain the information. Some countries have it straight up public. Some have shareholders only and have to pay for the UBO information and others have Director public but have to pay for shareholder/UBO information. In general, all information in the EU is accessible to anyone who wants it, public or payment.

 

[JohnLocke]

EU and Privacy are two word which don't work in a combination.

You may use nominee services or complicated company structures to avoid any public records, but other then this may not be possible in the EU.

 

[lrotter]

I’m not really comfortable with nominees. Afterwards, opening a bank account will also be a problem. Bank always see it as something suspicious .

Your model with this approach is already suspicious. If you want Europe you have to sacrifice privacy almost all the registers are either opened freely up to UBO level or accessible by request and with fixed fees for downloading information about directors/UBO