The European Union has reportedly reached a provisional agreement to introduce registers of beneficial ownership that do not allow the public - and therefore money-laundering reporting officers - access to information about trusts.

The Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners has told Compliance Matters that it was privy to a European Union agreement to introduce registers of beneficial ownership that did not allow the public - and therefore money-laundering reporting officers - access to information about certain (and indeed perhaps all) trusts.

This has been a bone of contention ever since Vince Cable, the UK's business secretary, publicised his intention to create a register last October and prime minister David Cameron began to bully all British colonies into setting their own up. The British government, according to the consultative paper that Cable's department released, originally proposed only to reveal information about the people who have a 25% stake in companies and to leave trusts out. After a good deal of scepticism about this in the press, the EU seems to have plumped for a fudge.

Under the deal reached on Tuesday night centralised registers will give details of the owners’ names, country of residence, nationality, month and year of birth, and the nature and extent of the beneficial interest held. In the case of trusts this information will only be accessible to authorities.

STEP's experts told CM: "It looks as though the EU agreement will see corporate registers of beneficial ownership become mandatory throughout the EU, but with some controls over public access to such registers.

"There will also be registers of trusts, but these will be simply based on information already due to be collected by tax authorities as a result of automatic exchange of tax information agreements. Moreover the information on such registers will only be available to competent authorities, with no suggestion of any requirement for broader public access."

Compliance Matters asked STEP whether the restrictions on information about trusts applied to all trusts or only those set up for vulnerable people. STEP was unable to say, but the wording of this provisional agreement seems to be a victory for all trusts, and therefore by definition a victory for the money-launderers.