AML investigations & beneficial-ownership network mapping

Screening a single name tells you about that name. But money-laundering risk in a corporate client rarely sits on the front company — it sits somewhere in the ownership and control structure behind it. An investigation maps that structure from the official register — sourced and dated — and screens the whole chain, so the people behind the front company are on your file rather than out of view.

When you need more than a name check

Enhanced due diligence, onboarding a corporate client, a complex or multi-jurisdiction structure, a PEP or higher-risk connection anywhere in the ownership — these are the cases where a name-only screen is not enough, and where a supervisor expects you to have looked through the structure to the ultimate beneficial owners.

How a FIRMCY investigation works

• Start from a company or a person. Pull the official Registrar of Companies file and read the directors, shareholders and charges straight into a structured record.
• Build the network. Follow the ownership and control links outward — parent companies, subsidiaries, shared officers — and trace the legal chain through nominees and holding layers toward the people behind it, not just the front company.
• Screen everyone in it. Every party in the network is checked against sanctions, PEP and adverse-media sources, so risk anywhere in the structure surfaces — not only on the name you started with.
• See where the risk concentrates. The investigation is synthesised into a judgment over the whole structure: which entity or person carries the risk, how control traces to the root, and what is material — with the reasoning shown, not a black box.

What you get

A single, audit-ready record: the legal ownership and control network mapped and sourced, every party screened, and a synthesised assessment of where the risk concentrates — with the reasoning and the underlying records retained as evidence. It is the difference between “we screened the company” and “we mapped the structure, sourced every link, and screened everyone in it.”

One thing FIRMCY does not do for you. Company registers publish the legal share register, not beneficial ownership — a nominee or a holding company is recorded exactly like anyone else. FIRMCY gives you that chain, sourced and dated, with each fact cited to the filing it came from. Determining and evidencing the ultimate beneficial owner remains your determination to make, on the record FIRMCY assembles for you.