Recognition of the Real Beneficiary

According to the FATF, a beneficial owner is "a natural person who ultimately owns or controls a customer and/or a natural person on whose account a transaction is conducted".

According to the European Union, a beneficial owner is defined as "a natural person who ultimately owns or controls a customer and/or a natural person on whose account a transaction or activity is conducted".

According to the Turkish legislation, the real beneficiary is defined as "the real person or persons who ultimately control or have ultimate influence over the real persons who carry out transactions before the obligor, the real person, legal entity or unincorporated entities on whose behalf the transactions are carried out". 

As can be understood from all the above definitions, the real beneficiary will be a natural person in any case.

Obligations regarding customer recognition also cover measures regarding the recognition of the real beneficiary. In our national legislation, the procedures and principles regarding customer recognition are regulated in the Measures Regulation, and the regulations on monitoring and control activities with a risk-based approach are regulated in the Compliance Regulation.

Within the scope of the principles regarding customer identification, obliged parties are obliged to identify the identities of those who make transactions and those on whose behalf or accounts transactions are made, and to take other necessary measures before the transactions are carried out in the transactions made before them or in the transactions they intermediate. In transactions requiring identification to be carried out before or through the obliged persons, the person acting on his/her own behalf but on behalf of another person is obliged to notify the obliged persons in writing on whose behalf he/she is acting before carrying out such transactions.

According to the Regulation on Measures; the obliged persons are required to take the necessary measures to determine whether they are acting on behalf of someone else, and in this context, they are required to post the necessary announcements in all workplaces where they provide service in a way that customers can easily see in order to remind their responsibilities to those who act on their own behalf and on behalf of someone else.