The mission of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is to promote policies that will improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world. The OECD has recently suggested and pressured Belize to incorporate within its Offshore Centre regulations the need for an Accounting Records (Maintenance) Act.
The act is very similar to the regulations imposed by other popular jurisdictions such as BVI and Seychelles.
It is well evident that the OECD will be requiring other offshore jurisdictions which have not yet internally enacted similar legislation to do so in the future.
The new Act incorporated by Belize jurisdiction stipulates that accounting records maintained by any Belize entity must be retained for a period of not less than five years following the closure of an entity. The Accounting Records (Maintenance) Act discloses options as to where the records can be kept and can be characterized as flexible. However, the act does disclose the need for a competent person to provide adequate care.
Additionally, the act also requires registered agents to know the whereabouts of the accounting records for each company incorporated and to be notified within 14 days of change of address.
Finally, the Accounting Records (Maintenance) Act upon its request towards any company to provide its accounting records will fine the registered agent of the company if the records are held overseas, are not produced in a timely fashion.