The Malta Business Registry should ensure that journalists and civil society organisations can still access sensitive company information, the Nationalist Party believes.

PN MPs Karol Aquilina and Ivan Bartolo said in a statement on Saturday that the MBR had been too quick to shut down access to the ultimate beneficial owners of companies, following a European Court of Justice decision. 

The ECJ this week ruled that information about company UBOs should not be in the public domain, in a decision that struck down an EU anti-money laundering directive that guaranteed public access to information on who the beneficial owners of companies are.

In its judgement, however, the ECJ said that civil society and the media have a legitimate interest in accessing such information, given their role in the fight against money laundering.

The MBR immediately moved to restrict access to information about company UBOs, citing that ECJ decision. It however made no mention of the rights of media or civil society organisations to that information. 

As of Saturday, media access to such information remained unavailable. 

The MBR had already removed information related to the UBO of struck-off companies two years ago, arguing at the time that it was doing so to clean up its database. 

In their statement, the two PN MPs urged Justice Minister Jonathan Attard and Economy Minister Silvio Schembri, who is politically responsible for the MBR, to introduce new laws that implement the ECJ decision into local law while safeguarding the rights of media and civil society organisations to tap UBO information. W