Trust, Licensing and Compliance

If you are carrying out due diligence on Magrat before signing an engagement letter, sending us client data or naming us as your service provider, this page holds everything you need in one place: our legal entity and registry code, our licence and who supervises it, the checks we run on our clients, the business activities we do not take on, and the independent registers where you can verify all of it yourself.

We publish this openly for a simple reason. We are a licensed obliged entity under Estonian anti-money laundering law, our clients are companies with real compliance obligations of their own, and their banks, auditors and counterparties ask legitimate questions about who keeps their books. Those questions deserve a straight answer from us rather than a guess assembled from third-party company databases.

Who we are

The history of Magrat Group in Estonia began in 2005. Today we are a team of more than 20 professionals working in over 10 languages, and we have assisted in establishing over 700 companies in Estonia. Our contracting entity and its official details are set out in the box at the top of this page.

The people who will actually handle your file are named and pictured on our team page — worth a look, because a provider unwilling to show who does the work is a warning sign in this industry.

Our licence and who supervises us

Magrat Baltic OÜ holds licence nr. FIU000433, which confirms our right to provide services under the Estonian Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Prevention Act. The licence is issued by the Estonian Financial Intelligence Unit (Rahapesu Andmebüroo), a government authority, and we are subject to its ongoing supervision.

In practice this means we are an obliged entity, not a self-declared one. We are required by law to identify our clients, to keep our due diligence current, to retain the underlying records and to report suspicious activity to the authorities. A provider without this licence is not permitted to offer corporate and trust services in Estonia at all, so verifying it is the first check any counterparty should run on a service provider here.

Independent professional recognition

Licensing establishes that we are permitted to operate. These recognitions speak to how we work, and each is awarded by a third party rather than claimed by us:

• Recognised accounting company status from the Estonian Association of Accountants (ERK) — held by only 22 of more than 6,000 accounting firms in Estonia (as of 2026).
• Included in the TOP Accounting Firms listing published by the business newspaper Äripäev, a ranking reached by around 1% of Estonian companies in the field (as of 2026).
• A leading position on the official e-Residency Marketplace, based on more than 250 independently verified client reviews.

What we check before we take you on

We carry out customer due diligence before entering into a client relationship, and before providing company formation, contact-person and other corporate services. The same compliance measures apply whenever the Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Prevention Act requires them: occasional transactions above the statutory threshold, and any case where there is a suspicion of money laundering or terrorist financing, whatever the amount. Where due diligence is required, there is no expedited route that skips it, and we cannot make an exception for a client in a hurry.

We apply written internal due diligence procedures, a risk assessment model and defined risk appetite thresholds, adopted under the Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Prevention Act and assessed by the Financial Intelligence Unit in connection with our licence. They are reviewed and updated regularly, and a designated money laundering reporting officer is responsible for applying them.

In general terms, due diligence covers identification and verification of the client, establishing the beneficial owners and the ownership and control structure, sanctions and politically-exposed-person screening, understanding the intended business activity and the source of funds — which is closely tied to economic substance, something the tax authority looks at in its own right — and, for clients we work with on an ongoing basis, monitoring that keeps the information we hold current rather than only accurate on day one.

What exactly we ask for depends on the service, the structure and the risk profile, so we set that out for your particular case at the enquiry stage. This is also why some of our questions can feel intrusive at the outset. We are not able to advise on how to obscure ownership, and we do not act for clients who are unwilling to disclose who ultimately controls the company.

Business activities we do not serve

Some risks cannot be mitigated to a level we are prepared to accept, and some cannot be mitigated at all because of the nature of the activity. We do not enter into a client relationship in those cases, and if an existing client moves into one of them, we end the engagement. We do not act for:

• Persons and companies subject to international sanctions, those whose activity or goods are subject to sanctions, and anyone suspected of evading sanctions or assisting in their evasion.
• Private military companies, and any activity connected with the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
• Persons and companies where there is good reason to suspect illegal activity, including money laundering and terrorist financing, or links to terrorist groups or movements.
• Production of or trade in narcotics and goods containing them, including cannabis in any form.
• Creation or distribution of pornography and similar content, and activity that may be regarded as prostitution.
• Anyone convicted of money laundering within the past ten years.

Beyond this list, whether we can act depends on the outcome of our risk assessment for the particular client. If that outcome is that we cannot act, we tell you as soon as we know.

Anti-bribery and anti-corruption

We do not offer, give, request or accept improper payments or advantages, and that applies to dealings with public officials, registries, banks and private counterparties alike. Estonian administrative procedures — company registration, registry filings, tax matters — are handled entirely through official channels at official fees. If anyone suggests that a payment can accelerate an Estonian government procedure on your behalf, that is not how we work and not something we will arrange.

If you are a client or a counterparty and have a concern about the conduct of anyone at Magrat, you can raise it with us directly using the contact details on this page.

Your data: legal basis and retention

We process client data under the GDPR, the Estonian Personal Data Protection Act, the Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Prevention Act and our client agreements. Consent is used only for direct marketing messages, which you can withdraw at any time without affecting our services to you. Retention is governed by law rather than by our preference:

• Data related to client agreements: seven years from the end of the agreement.
• Anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist-financing data: five years from termination of the business relationship.

The full detail is set out in our principles of processing client data.

How to verify all of this independently

You do not have to take our word for any of the above. Every claim on this page can be checked in a public source:

NB! Third-party business databases and directory sites often republish data from the Estonian Business Register automatically, and this information can be several months out of date or, in some cases, mixed up with similarly named companies. In the event of any discrepancy, the e-Business Register should be treated as the authoritative source.

Due diligence requests and compliance contact

If you are a bank, auditor, investor or counterparty running checks on us or on a client we serve, write to us at office@magrat.eu with your request and we will respond directly. Standard requests — confirmation of licence status, registry details, a signed data processing agreement, or confirmation that a company is under our administration where the client authorises it — are handled as routine business.

If you are still at the stage of deciding what to set up, our Estonia company formation, tax and employment guide covers the ground in detail, and our services page sets out what we take on. If you are choosing a provider and want to ask the harder questions before you commit, that is a good instinct and we would rather answer them now than later. Get in touch with us and ask.

Last reviewed: September 2026.