The BORIS system and the beneficial ownership registries at the service of the prevention of money laundering

In a context of digitization and algorithmization of justice, the relevance of the Beneficial Ownership Registers Interconnection System (BORIS) within the European Union is analysed. The focus is on examining the role that our Registry of Beneficial Ownership is called upon to play in fighting against the proliferation of opaque corporate structures and shell companies linked to money laundering and other economic crimes by reinforcing transparency and access to information regarding the actual beneficial ownership of companies. After studying the main lines of the Implementing Regulation (EU) 2021/269 of the Commission, Royal Decree-Law 7/2021, issued for the transposition into our legal system of the Directives on money laundering, the Royal Decree Draft by which the Registry of Beneficial Ownership is created and its Regulation is approved (submitted in March 2022), and the STJUE of November 22, 2022, there is an urgent need to face a legislative reform at European level that clearly defines what can be understood by legitimate interest in accessing data on beneficial ownership, on the understanding that this definition must be sufficiently broad, in terms of “sufficient” and “proportionate”, to prevent obtaining this data from becoming impossible in practice.