The Register of Excluded Persons is an information system in which persons who do not meet the conditions for exercising the functions of a member of an elected (i.e. in particular statutory) body are entered. Since its introduction on 01.07.2023 in the Companies Act, it was intended that the Register of Excluded Persons would be accessed by both the registry courts and notaries making direct entries in the Companies Register. With effect from January 2024, the register has been made realistically accessible.
Access to the register was not immediate, as for some time the Ministry of Justice has been creating the register by collecting data from international information systems from other countries in order to make the register as complete as possible. These countries were mainly EU and EEC countries, whose business registers are interconnected through the Business Register Interconnection System, but also non-EU countries.
Making the register available to courts and notaries will facilitate the implementation of any corporate changes in persons, especially if they are managing directors, proxies or statutory directors. A notary or a court may use the register when making an entry of a person in the Commercial Register to find out whether the entered person has been convicted in the Czech Republic or abroad for a criminal offence involving loss of integrity within the meaning of the Trade Licensing Act, whether he or she has been excluded from the performance of the function of a member of the statutory body by a disqualification decision, whether his or her property has been declared bankrupt or if he or she has been imposed a penalty of prohibition of activity that constitutes an obstacle to the performance of the function.
Thanks to the availability of the excluded persons register, it is no longer necessary to submit a criminal record extract, even in cases where the person comes from EU countries or a selected third country (e.g. the UK, China, Ukraine or other countries). The abolition of the obligation to provide an extract from the criminal register will in particular speed up the registration of foreign persons, as the requirement to obtain an extract from the (foreign) register made the process of registration of third-country nationals particularly lengthy.
The disclosure of the register of excluded persons continues the trend set by previous amendments to the Companies Act and the Public Registers Act, which aim to make it easier to start a business in the Czech Republic. The establishment of a company or subsequent changes can thus be processed very quickly, especially compared to other countries.
