100,000 companies to lose CAC registration for not publishing returns – Registrar

By Fatai Ahmed

The Corporate Affairs Commission, CAC, has listed 100,000 to be delisted from the Commission’s register for not publishing returns to the government.

The Registrar General of the Commission, Garba Abubakar, disclosed this while addressing members of the Civil Society, the Media and other Security Agencies on the use of Beneficial Ownership Register initiatives in Kano, Thursday.

The CAC boss explained that the law is clear on the procedures, insisting that any company not filing its returns is considered not in operation or inactive and is liable to be struck off.

He added the names of the companies will soon be published on the Commission’s website and that they will be given four weeks within which to respond, failure of which, they will be struck off the CAC data.

Abubakar noted that after the first 100,000 companies are delisted, another batch of defaulting companies will be compiled.

“So the consequences of striking out are like a lost property but they are at liberty to reapply on the register to be relisted and if they are not relisted within the next ten years, whatever property they have is lost”, he warned.

The Registrar hinted that the register is not an end in itself but a means to an end, especially as an avenue to check financial crimes carried out using corporate bodies.

“You will agree with me that most procurements are done using companies but the new system provides information about the true owners of these companies so it makes it easier for investigators to know the true owners of these companies, the natural persons that truly control the companies