CIPC opens real-time ownership register to law enforcement as 618 investigations concluded

Accredited law enforcement officials now have round-the-clock access to beneficial ownership information held by the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission, under a module launched in Pretoria on Tuesday.

Trade, Industry and Competition Minister Parks Tau said the upgrade is part of South Africa’s effort to strengthen financial integrity and combat money laundering, implemented through the CIPC’s beneficial ownership register and inter-agency collaboration.

The new module, he said, will expose ownership links and make tracing easier for investigators. Accredited users from law enforcement agencies can view and download supporting documents in real time, without obstruction.

“The companies that the CIPC registers can be abused by people who set them up for the wrong reasons,” Tau said at the launch. “Shell structures, layered ownership, chains of entities designed so that no one can tell who is really in charge. The answer to secrecy is visibility.”

He said investigators can now take a single director and see every other entity that person is linked to, active or inactive, and connect an entity under investigation to every other entity in the CIPC database, not only those on the beneficial ownership register.

Tau said the purpose is to end a culture of disregard for accountability and transparency and to stop financial crime in its tracks. He said the department will keep working to build a culture of transparency and accountability among corporate citizens, keep the country off the grey list, and make South Africa a place where no one can hide behind a company.

“We meet that standard by working together with Treasury, the CIPC, South African Revenue Service, the Financial Intelligence Centre, the South African Police Service, National Prosecuting Authority and the private sector, and we give that cooperation its force by putting good data in the hands of the people who fight financial crime,” he said.

CIPC Commissioner Advocate Rory Voller told the same launch that collaboration is important for greater breakthroughs against financial crime. He noted that a new cycle of mutual evaluation lies ahead, with an effectiveness report due to the Financial Action Task Force on 19 October 2026.

“This is saying, let us take advantage of the tools we have and the availability of this newly upgraded Beneficial Ownership Disclosure Module to achieve even more successful investigations and prosecutions and mitigate the risk of money laundering, terrorist financing, and proliferation financing,” Voller said.

Since the register opened on 1 April 2023, the CIPC has received more than three million beneficial ownership filings, covering local and international owners. It has concluded more than 618 investigations and issued more than 350 compliance notices to entities that did not comply, or that tried to abuse the system with false supporting information.

Source: SAnews (South African Government News Agency), CIPC helps to combat money laundering