Seychelles tightens trustee disclosure and register duties

Seychelles trustees must now keep trust-register information accurate and up to date and respond to defined AML/CFT disclosure requests under Act 14 of 2026.

The Trusts (Amendment) Act, 2026 was passed by the National Assembly on 5 August, assented to on 11 August and published in the Official Gazette dated 24 August. It amends sections 2, 25, 28, 29 and 37 of the Trusts Act, 2021.

The commencement position follows a general rule in section 6(2) of the Digitization and Publication of Gazette Act, 2020. A Bill passed by the National Assembly and assented to by the President becomes law on publication in the Gazette unless the Act prescribes another date. Act 14 specifies no different date, so it became law on 24 August 2026.

Register accuracy becomes an express duty

New section 28(5A) requires a trustee to maintain accurate and up-to-date information in the trust register required by section 28(2). Act 14 also brings subsection 5A into the cross-reference in section 28(11) and repeals section 28(12).

The text establishes the standard but does not prescribe a review interval, an update deadline measured in days or a technology workflow. A trustee therefore needs an operating process that can identify a change, check it and update the register. The chosen cadence is an internal control, not statutory wording.

A periodic review can support the duty, but the legal test is whether the register information is accurate and current when it matters. A defensible record should connect a material change in trust information to the corresponding register update and identify who checked it.

The section 25 change is narrower: subsection 25(7) is repealed and subsection 25(8) is renumbered as subsection 25(7). It should be tracked as a separate textual amendment rather than used to imply an operating mechanism that Act 14 does not describe.

The register duty, disclosure route and request rule should remain separate in implementation. Section 28 concerns the accuracy of information held in the register. Section 29 concerns when information may be furnished and the protection attached to a good-faith disclosure. Section 37 concerns how a trustee handles a qualifying request, the three grounds for not complying and the option of Court directions. A review record can identify which section is engaged, retain the relevant facts and avoid treating a permitted disclosure as a substitute for keeping the register current.

AML/CFT requests get a qualified disclosure route

New section 29(1)(d) allows information to be furnished to a financial institution or designated non-financial business or profession so that the recipient can comply with the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism Act, 2020. The amendment defines both recipient categories by reference to that 2020 Act.

New section 29(1A) says a trustee who furnishes information in good faith under section 29(1) is not, for that reason, treated as breaching confidentiality, fiduciary duty or another disclosure restriction imposed by the Trusts Act or another written law.

That protection is tied to the statutory disclosure route; it is not a general commercial right to trust information. A trustee can record who made the request, the recipient category relied on and the stated AML/CFT purpose before recording the response. Those checks evidence the decision but are not additional conditions written into Act 14.

Three limits shape the trustee’s response

New section 37(3A) requires a trustee to comply with a qualifying AML/CFT request unless the trustee reasonably considers it ambiguous, disproportionate or not directly related to that compliance. If one of those grounds applies, the trustee may apply to the Court for directions in respect of the request.

The three grounds require different reasoning. Ambiguity concerns meaning, disproportionality concerns scope and direct relevance concerns the connection to AML/CFT compliance. An internal decision record can separate those questions and preserve the factual basis for disclosure, challenge or a Court application without presenting that workflow as statutory text.

The immediate implementation test is concrete: trust-register changes should be traceable to updates, qualifying requests should be assessed against the three statutory grounds and any Court application should identify the request in question. Those records should evidence compliance from 24 August, the date Act 14 became law.

The next technical test is whether trustees can demonstrate accurate registers and reasoned responses to qualifying AML/CFT requests under sections 28, 29 and 37.