Is giving false beneficial ownership information a crime in the UAE?
Yes. Providing false or misleading beneficial ownership information is now expressly a criminal offence under the UAE AML law. Any person who intentionally supplies false or misleading information about the beneficial owner to a competent authority that requests it, or to a financial institution, a designated non-financial business or profession, or a virtual asset service provider, commits an offence.
The penalty is imprisonment and a fine of not less than AED 20,000, or either of these two penalties. The provision reflects the UAE’s wider push for beneficial ownership transparency and its alignment with Financial Action Task Force expectations that hidden ownership structures should not be used to disguise control of companies.
For regulated entities, this reinforces the importance of collecting, verifying and updating beneficial owner details during onboarding and periodic review. For companies and their officers, it is a direct warning that inaccurate ownership declarations, whether to a registrar or to a bank, carry criminal exposure and are not treated as minor administrative slips.
Legal Reference (UAE):
· Federal Decree-Law No. 10 of 2025, Article 35(1) — criminalises intentionally providing false or misleading beneficial owner information.
For more details, consult the full text of Federal Decree-Law No. 10 of 2025 or seek guidance from your AML compliance officer.
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