The beneficial ownership information collected by FinCEN is not made public and is only available to certain government agencies and used for law enforcement, national security, and intelligence purposes, as well as financial institutions so they can fulfill certain reporting obligations, regulatory agencies that supervise financial institutions, and the Department of Treasury.
In accordance with the Corporate Transparency Act, FinCEN may permit access to beneficial ownership information to:
- Federal agencies engaged in national security, intelligence, or law enforcement activity;
- State, local, and Tribal law enforcement agencies with court authorization;
- Officials at the Department of the Treasury;
- Foreign law enforcement agencies, judges, prosecutors, and other authorities that submit a request through a U.S. Federal agency to obtain beneficial ownership information for authorized activities related to national security, intelligence, and law enforcement;
- Financial institutions with customer due diligence requirements under applicable law (in order to facilitate compliance with those requirements); and
- Federal functional regulators or other appropriate regulatory agencies that supervise or assess financial institutions with access to beneficial ownership information (in order to supervise such financial institutions’ compliance with customer due diligence requirements).
Beneficial ownership information reported to FinCEN is stored in a secure, non-public database using rigorous information security methods and controls typically used in the Federal government to protect non-classified yet sensitive information systems at the highest security level.
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