4.3.1. Core Elements of Customer Due Diligence

يسري تنفيذه من تاريخ 7/6/2021

LFIs are reminded that all elements of CDD (and EDD) apply to customers that are legal persons and legal arrangements. LFIs should refer to the Guidelines on Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism and Illicit Organizations for Financial Institutions for a full discussion of CDD obligations. CDD obligations include, but are not limited to, the requirement that LFIs, using a risk-based approach:

	•	Identify the customer and verify if the customer’s identity is reliable by using independent sources (discussed in this section);
	•	Identify beneficial owners of the customer (discussed in section 4.3.2 below);
	•	Assess and understand customer risk (discussed in section 4.2 above);
	•	Obtain information on the purpose and intended nature of the account (discussed in section 4.3.3 below); and
	•	Ensure ongoing due diligence is conducted and that the business relationship and transactions are scrutinized in the course of the relationship (discussed in section 4.3.4 below).

LFIs must maintain records of the customer information obtained through CDD to enable the LFI to demonstrate compliance to CBUAE and to comply with requests for information from competent authorities.

As discussed above in section 4.1, LFIs must identify legal person customers by collecting the following information and verifying it using independent, reliable sources:

	•	The name [this may not apply for legal arrangements], Legal Form and Memorandum of Association;
	•	Headquarters’ office address or the principal place of business; in addition, if the legal person or arrangement is a foreign entity, the name and address of its legal representative in the State;
	•	Articles of Association or any similar documents, approved by the relevant authority within the State;
	•	Names of relevant persons holding senior management positions in the legal person or legal arrangement.

Verification of information collected to identify the customer should be risk-based. In standard cases, verification should rely on government-issued or certified documents, such as business licenses and notarized copies of the legal person’s memorandum of association. Where risks are lower, LFIs may consider using non-documentary sources, such as public registries, including the registries maintained by company registrars in the UAE. Consulting a registry, however, is not a replacement for collecting the documents specifically required by the AML-CFT Decision, even if the customer was required to submit the same documents to the registry.