A trust with a Guernsey trustee and Italian beneficiaries

Onboarding · 12 questions

Scenario

Ferrers Trust Company (Guernsey) Limited, trustee of the Bellini Family Trust, asks the firm to take on the registered office, company secretary and accounting for Camuna Holdings Ltd, a Maltese company the trust wholly owns. The previous Maltese provider retired in June and the trustee has sent a full onboarding pack.

  • The trustee: Ferrers Trust Company (Guernsey) Limited, licensed by the Guernsey Financial Services Commission. It has been sole trustee since the trust was settled.
  • The trust: the Bellini Family Trust, settled in Guernsey in 2009 and governed by Guernsey law. Discretionary.
  • The settlor: Giorgio Bellini, Italian, sold his packaging manufacturing business in Brescia in 2008 for €31,000,000 and settled €12,000,000 into the trust the following year, retaining no power to revoke it. The disposal is recorded in the Italian register and was reported at the time. He died in 2019.
  • The beneficiaries: a discretionary class made up of his widow, Renata Bellini; their three adult children, Chiara, Marco and Sofia; and their issue. None has a fixed entitlement.
  • The protector: Avv. Luca Ferretti, the family’s Italian lawyer since the 1990s. He may remove and appoint the trustee, and his consent is required for any distribution of capital.
  • The letter of wishes: dated 2009 and not binding on the trustee. It asks that income be applied for Renata during her lifetime and that capital pass equally to the three children afterwards.
  • Disclosed by the trustee: its own file records that Chiara’s husband, Tommaso Greco, was appointed six months ago to the board of an Italian state-owned energy company. Chiara has never received a distribution.
  • The Maltese company: Camuna Holdings Ltd has held a portfolio of listed European securities, currently €9,000,000, with a Maltese bank since 2011. Audited every year without qualification. Its only transactions are portfolio dealings and an annual dividend to the trust.
  • Distributions: the trust has distributed €180,000 a year to Renata since 2019, and nothing to anyone else
  • Screening: the firm has screened the settlor, the widow, the three children, the protector and the trustee. No sanctions, no adverse media and no PEP results on any of them.

Grounded in: Trusts and Trustees Act (Cap. 331) (Trusts under Maltese law; settlor, trustee, protector and beneficiaries) · PMLFTR (S.L. 373.01) (Beneficial ownership of trusts, politically exposed persons, enhanced due diligence, reliance on third parties) · Directive (EU) 2015/849 as amended (Art. 3(6)(b) beneficial owner of a trust; Art. 3(9) and (11) prominent public functions and family members; Arts. 20–23 and 25–26) · FIAU Implementing Procedures, Part I (Identifying beneficial owners of trusts and classes of beneficiaries; PEP measures; conditions for reliance)