Ensuring transparency of information and new registers

Among the risks of business activities the experts of the Information agency Credinform single out a so-called information risk. It is evidenced in the result of legal restrictions on the access to information about business entities that complicates complete verification of counterparties for reliability and integrity.

Such restriction is introduced by federal laws «On Commercial Secrets» (№93-FZ from 2004) and «On personal data» (№152 from 2006). The first one regulates the relations connected with the establishment, change and termination of the regime of commercial secret in regard to information. At the same time the Article 5 defines the information that cannot be a commercial secret. The second law regulates the relations connected with the processing of personal data using automation devices.

However, there is a group of federal laws, defining general availability of information, which includes, for example, data contained in the public registers, as well as other well-known data and information, the access to which is not restricted. In addition, commercial secret regime cannot be set up in regard to accounting (financial) statement. This group conventionally includes the following federal laws: «On state registration of legal entities and individual entrepreneurs» (№129-FZ from 2001), «On Accounting» (№402-FZ from 2011), «On Information, information technologies and the protection of information» (№149- FZ from 2006).

As a part of the maintenance of open data policy and in interests of business the state seeks to reach a certain degree of information transparency. In 2016 it was manifested itself in the following facts:

• since January 1, 2016 an updated version of the Unified information register of procurement has begun operating, which provides, in cooperation with other information systems, full information, including plans-graphics of procurement, terms of contracts’ projects, participants, as well as the exchange of electronic documents between them;
• in May 2016 Russia signed an agreement on automatic exchange of information, according to which taxmen may receive information related to investment income, sale of shares, bank account balance, interest on deposits and bonds of Russian citizens abroad;
• the order of the Federal Tax Service of Russia entered into force, regulating the procedure of the validity check of the information contained in EGRUL, and giving the right to make an entry in the register on the unreliability of information;
• the tax secrecy regime was canceled from a part of information available to a tax authority, in particular: from the average number of employees, from paid sums of taxes and fees, the amounts of income and expenses according to the accounting (financial) statement, the amounts of arrears and debt on penalties and fines;
• since the beginning of 2017 the federal law will enter into force, according to which a legal entity is required to have information about its beneficial owners and to and to submit it to competent authorities.

It may be added that the decisions on the rules of procedure of following registers are made: the State register of credit consumer cooperatives, the Unified Register of SRO in the financial market, the Unified Register of issued certificates of conformity and registered declarations of conformity, the Register of notifications about pledges of movable property, the Unified State Registry of real estate; decisions on the establishment of the Register of the heads of local administrations, the Register of travel agencies.

It is expected that it will be opened an access to information on the attested powers of attorney in the register of notarial acts Unified information system of notaries; companies will disclose the interim consolidated statement in the public access systems; banks will receive new black lists of clients, which have canceled running contracts for services; the FTS of the RF will begin to create the Register of sources of income and the same Register of debts on obligatory payments, the Unified State Register of the civil status registration.

It should be noted that a large share of the information contained in the sources and registers mentioned above is possible to find in a centralized source – in the Information and analytical system Globas-i®.