Lately, quite a few companies have received so-called discrepancy reports from the German Federal Gazette (“Bundesanzeiger”), the authority in charge of keeping the German transparency register. The number of these reports being submitted has increased significantly recently. Once you receive a discrepancy report, there are quite a few things to observe.

On 5 May 2023, the Federal Office of Administration (FOA), the competent authority for the German Transparency Register, has once again published new interpretation notes to the German Anti-Money Laundering Law.
In these, the FOA now also comments for the first time on the extended transparency register obligations of foreign companies and legal entities such as foundations and trusts (“foreign associations”) with direct or indirect real estate ownership in Germany introduced by the Sanctions Enforcement Act II.

The German Whistleblower Protection Act was (finally) passed on 12 May 2023, after several attempts, following final amendments proposed by the Mediation Committee on 9 May 2023, which have now been accepted by the Federal Parliament (Bundestag) and the Federal Council (Bundesrat). The long overdue law serves to implement the European Whistleblower Directive (Directive (EU) 2019/1937), which actually provided for an implementation deadline of December 2021. The law will now come into force in mid-June 2023.

The second act on the effective enforcement of sanctions (Sanctions Enforcement Act II) came into force on 1 January 2023. This includes not only sanctions-related measures, but also amendments to other laws, in particular the German Money Laundering Act, and has implications for the obligations of companies with regard to the transparency register.

The German Bundestag passed the German Whistleblower Protection Act on 16 December 2022. After initially not being expected to be passed this year, the bill did make it onto the agenda of the last session day of the year at short notice and was passed in a version amended by the Legal Affairs Committee (Rechtsausschuss) with the coalition’s majority. The next step is for the Bundesrat to approve the bill. However, this is not expected until the first plenary session in February 2023 at the earliest.