Associations regularly change the composition of their board of directors: appointment/removal of directors, replacement of the Secretary General, changes of function, etc. These changes can occur several times during a calendar year.

All these changes must be recorded in various registers: filing with the Registry of Legal Persons for publication in the annexes to the Belgian Official Gazette, correction of data in the Crossroads Bank of Enterprises (CBE) and updating of the register of beneficial owners (UBO).

The legal requirement to update these various registers, which may seem harmless, can quickly become a real nightmare for associations. With a very concrete result: the information published in the Belgian Official Gazette almost never corresponds with the data in the Crossroads Bank of Enterprises or in the UBO register.

The consequences of these discrepancies can be dramatic. Let us mention a few of them:

• The impossibility of committing your association to a third party (when signing a contract or applying for VAT registration abroad, for example)
• The personal liability of directors in the event of a disputed situation, even several years after your resignation.
• Collective fines of up to €50,000 (for which you are jointly and severally liable as a director).
• The freezing or closing of your association's bank account by your own bank.

Our firm has been keeping the UBO register and updating the data at the Crossroads Bank for dozens of associations for several years.

We have become fully aware of the endemic problem encountered by the majority of associations with the Secretary Court services of Brussels (“Greffe du Tribunal”). The files submitted are generally ... rejected.

Our firm has therefore decided, as from 1 January 2022, to lighten your mental, administrative and legal burden by modifying our service to include the management of the filing with the Registry and the publication in the Belgian Official Gazette.

It is very simple.

Does your association need to record the resignation/appointment of a director in the near future? We take care of all the following steps:

• The filing of the file with the Registry and follow-up of the publication in the Belgian Monitor;
• Updating with the Crossroads Bank for Enterprises
• Updating the UBO Register.

With our all-in solution, your association :

• Avoids endless and energy-consuming bureaucratic ping-pong
• Benefits from several years of experience with the authorities in charge of these prerogatives,
• Greatly reduces the risk of missed administrative appointments.