FAQ

It should be noted that Article 12(3) of the Republic of Lithuania Law on the Prevention of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (hereinafter - LPMLTF) stipulates that financial institutions shall verify the documents and information concerning the beneficial owner submitted by the customer on the basis of the documents, data or information obtained from a reliable and independent source.
The instructions for financial market participants, which are used to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing (hereinafter - Instructions), stipulate that reliable and independent sources are official documents with the person’s photograph and/or relevant registration number that cannot be easily copied or falsified (a passport, an identity card, a legal person’s registration certificate, an extract from the register of legal persons, notarised copies of documents, etc.) specifying the customer’s name and surname, personal identification number or another unique combination of characters assigned to the person for identification purposes, nationality, the person’s photograph and/or signature, etc. (for natural persons) or the name, address, code, number of the registration certificate, VAT number, etc. (for legal persons) and information from reliable publicly available databases.
Taking into consideration the fact that neither Instructions nor the LPMLTF provide the final list of reliable and independent sources where financial market participants (hereinafter - FMPs) have to verify the customer’s and beneficial owner’s information in each case, each FMP needs to make an assessment of and take a decision on reliable and independent sources to be used for the verification of the customer’s and beneficial owner’s identity. It should be noted that in assessing reliability and independence of a source it is important to make sure that the process of verification of the information obtained from a customer is based on such data and information that would make it possible to ascertain authenticity of the customer’s and beneficial owner’s identity as well as correctness and relevance of such information. For example, if information is received from government databases or registers, it may be regarded as sufficiently reliable in most cases and can be used when performing the customer’s risk assessment, taking other decisions related to the customer’s business relationships, etc. On the other hand, the information obtained, for example, from newspapers, blogs, social media or third parties may be regarded as less reliable, however, it might be used by the FMP as an additional source together with the information from reliable and independent sources when verifying information on the customer and beneficial owner.
As indicated above, the FMP should define the sources for the verification of the customer’s and beneficial owner’s information, which will be regarded as reliable and independent in the FMP’s activity. In the opinion of the Bank of Lithuania, the assessment of a source’s reliability should consider such aspects as, for example, whether the information source from which information is obtained (e.g. commercial databases) regularly updates (reviews) its information, whether such information is relevant and whether it is possible to forge or falsify such information. The assessment of a source’s independence should consider whether a specific source is not connected with the customer by direct personal, professional or family links and whether the source could be unreasonably influenced by the customer itself. It should be noted that independence and reliability aspects of a source are interrelated and inseparable, thus the FMP has to make sure that such source complies with both of these aspects when verifying the information contained in reliable and independent sources. In all cases, the FMP itself makes a decision on the use of a specific source and should make sure that the sources used are helpful in verifying the correctness of information provided by the customer and, if needed, be able to provide the grounds for the assessment of the sources used as reliable and independent.