Regulation nr. 276/2019 of March 26 from the Portuguese Institute for Public Markets, Real Estate and Construction (IMPIC) imposes the scope of operation of IMPIC to all entities involved in real estate mediation, purchase and sale (including resale and exchange), rentals and real estate development.
All entities to which the Regulation is applicable are now obliged under general duties and subject to certain restrictive measures, namely control and and procedures of identification and diligence duties, and are required to adopt appropriate policies and procedures for managing the risk of money laundering, to have in place internal mechanisms that mitigate the risk of ML/TF and to identify all transactions and parties to such transactions. Elements regarding transactions, identification of parties and copies, records or electronic data and communications must be stored for a period of seven years.
Public limited companies, as well as limited companies and sole proprietors with more than 5 employees or associates must appoint a member of their top management as Regulatory Compliance Officer, who will be responsible for ensuring the compliance with all legal obligations imposed to these entities and shall be the privileged contact between the entity and IMPIC in all matters regarding the fight against money laundering.
Real estate entities must also guarantee that their employees and associates are duly informed about the obligations set forth by the said Law and Regulation, namely by attending training sessions, conferences, symposia or lectures from post-graduation or higher education courses. This way, training programmes must contain a section dedicated to methods and mechanisms of implementation of sectoral and individual risk analysis concerning the real estate industry.
As to mandatory communications, the highlights go to: (i) date of operation start; (ii) data regarding every real estate transaction in which they are involved; (iii) data regarding rental contracts with monthly rents equal or higher than € 2.500,00 EUR, as well as (iv) the elaboration of an annual report describing specific, independent and anonymous channels that appropriately and internally ensure the receipt, processing and storage of irregularity reports; and a summary stating all received internal communications and respective processing.
These communications must be made electronically (and authenticated via a qualified digital certificate) by using the IMPIC website and approved forms, after registering with IMPIC.
Non-complying with the obligations set forth by this Regulation is equivalent to the practice of the administrative offences established by Law 83/2017 of August 18 that are penalised with the payment of substantially high fines.
The Real Estate Law Departament team from Belzuz Abogados, S.L.P. Portugal is widely experienced in legal consultancy in terms of monitoring of compliance of real estate entities with their obligations and duties.
Departamento de Direito Imobiliário | Portugal
Belzuz Abogados SLP
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