Privacy Policy

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to the MSCS CONSULTANTS LTD privacy policy.

MSCS CONSULTANTS LTD respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy policy will inform yo as to how we collect, use and look after your personal data. It further describes your privacy rights and the control you can exercise in relation to your personal data.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION CONTROLLER

This privacy policy is issued on behalf of MSCS CONSULTANTS LTD a limited liability company registered in the

Republic of Cyprus with registration number HE 343372, who is the controller of your personal data:

When we mention “MSCS”, “we”, “us” or “our” in this privacy policy, we are referring to the MSCS CONSULTANTS LTD responsible for processing your data.

This privacy policy is addressed to individuals outside our firm with whom we interact, including individual clients, representatives, directors, shareholders, beneficial owners, visitors of our website as well as other users of our services and suppliers.

CONTACT DETAILS

If you have any questions about this privacy policy or our privacy practices or if you would like to exercise your legal rights, please contact our Data Privacy Manager in the following ways:

Email address: [email protected]

Postal address: Data Privacy Manager

MSCS CONSULTANTS LTD

19 Kifisias Str., Ayios Dometios

2369 Nicosia, Cyprus

Telephone number: 00357 22-251518

CHANGES TO THE PRIVACY POLICY AND YOUR DUTY TO INFORM US OF CHANGES

We keep our privacy policy under regular review.

It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us.

THIRD-PARTY LINKS

This website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy policy of every website you visit.

2. THE DATA WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU

Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified.

We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which we have grouped together as follows:

  • Identity Data includes first name, maiden name, last name, username or similar identifier, marital status, title, date of birth, photograph, relationship to a person, position, role, company, employer, gender, copy of passport or national identity, utility bill, bank reference, bank statement.
  • Contact Data includes billing address, delivery address, email address, fax number and telephone numbers (including mobile telephone number(s)), postal address.
  • Financial Data includes payment related information, financial information related to anti-money laundering or compliance purposes.
  • Business Data includes date identifying you in relation to matters on which you instruct us or in which you are involved;
  • Payment Details Data includes billing address, payment method, bank account number, accountholder name, account security details, invoice records, payment records, SWIFT details, IBAN details, payment amount, payment date, records of cheques;
  • Identification and Background Information Data includes information provided by your or collected by us as part of our business acceptance processes, anti-money laundering and compliance obligations, information from publicly available sources and screening providers such as sanction lists;
  • Attendance Records Data includes details of your visits to our office;
  • Preference Data includes your consent to receive newsletters, legal updates or any other communication from us;
  • Consent Records Data includes records of any consents you have given us, together with the date, means of consent and any other information provided such as the subject matter of the consent provided;
  • Supplier Data includes contact details and other information about you or your company or organisation where you provide services to MSCS CONSULTANTS LTD;
  • Criminal Record Data includes data where permitted by law such as existence of prior criminal offences or confirmation of clean criminal record.

IF YOU FAIL TO PROVIDE PERSONAL DATA

Where we need to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of a contract we have with you, and you fail to provide that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have or are trying to enter into with you. In this case, we may have to cancel the services we provide to you, but we will notify you if this is the case at the time.

3. HOW IS YOUR PERSONAL DATA COLLECTED?

We regularly collect or receive personal data as part of our professional services and or activities. We use different methods to collect data from and about you including:

  • Directly from you when you give us your identity, contact and financial data by filling in our forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email or otherwise. This includes personal data you provide us as part of our client acceptance procedures or due diligence and anti-money laundering requirements;
  • When you make information public which we may choose to collect;
  • When you or your organisation or business associates seek legal advice or legal, administrative, corporate, trust, banking and other services;
  • When you or your organisation offer or provide services to us as our vendor;
  • When you send us information via our website;
  • Through screening  providers  who  assist  us  with  our  legal  obligations  to  conduct  under  anti-money laundering, sanctions screening and regulatory checks;
  • Via law enforcement authorities;
  • Via public records and sources.

4. HOW WE USE YOUR PERSONAL DATA

We will only use your personal data for the following purposes:

  • Service provision arrangements: legal, administrative, corporate, banking, trust and other consultancy services provided through MSCS and its associate firms.
  • Business relationship: managing and administering our relationship with you, your company or organization including keeping records about business contacts, services, billing and collection, and payments, operating and managing our website and services provided to you, communicating and interacting with you and notifying you of any changes to our website or services;
  • Communication: sending emails, newsletters and other messages to keep you informed of legal developments, market insights and for marketing of our services;
  • Client compliance: Know your client checks and confirming and verifying your identity. Client due diligence checks under anti-money laundering requirements which may involve automated screening checks to ensure that clients and contacts are genuine and to prevent fraud or crime and we may not be able take instructions if you do not provide the information we need to do these checks;
  • Site security: to provide security to our offices and other premises;
  • Online security: protecting our information assets and technology platforms from unauthorized access or usage and to monitor for malware and other security threats;
  • Regulatory: compliance with our legal and regulatory obligations including record keeping obligations, compliance screening, anti-money laundering and sanctions checks and reporting to and being audited by regulatory bodies;
  • Compliance: compliance with court orders, applicable law and other legal and regulatory requirements and obligations and also to exercise or defend legal claims or proceedings;
  • Conducting investigations and fraud prevention: detecting, preventing and investigating fraud;
  • Financial management: managing and administering the payment of our invoices and the fulfilment of your financial obligations towards us;
  • Managing suppliers: who deliver services to us, including processing payments, accounting auditing billing and collection;
  • Managing IT systems and provision of security: managing and administering our IT systems and ensuring that we have adequate security measures in place;
  • Legal proceedings: establishing, exercising and defending legal rights/claims;
  • Legitimate interest: to pursue the legitimate business interests listed in the “Legitimate Interests” section of this policy below.

If you have given us your express consent, we may process your personal data to communicate with you with respect to legal developments, announcements, events and services. You may withdraw your consent at any time by contacting our Data Privacy Manager using the contact information provided at the beginning of this Privacy Policy.

5. PURPOSES FOR WHICH WE WILL USE YOUR PERSONAL DATA

We will process your personal data for the following reasons:

    • processing is necessary in connection with an instruction you have given us or a contract which we have entered into with you or to take steps at your request before entering into such a contract to provide legal advice and legal, administrative, corporate trust or other services to our clients;
    • this is necessary to comply with legal or regulatory obligations to which we are subject to: for example, anti-money laundering and mandatory client screening checks or disclosure to law enforcement;
    • processing is necessary for our legitimate business interests: provided this does not override any interests or fundamental rights and freedoms that you have as an individual. Our legitimate interests are listed in the next section;
    • you have given us your consent: for the processing of your personal data. We shall rely on consent as a legal basis for processing your personal data in relation to communicating with you with respect to legal developments, announcements, events and notifying you of our services. You have the right to withdraw such consent at any time by contacting our Data Protection Manager using the details set out above.

We have legitimate business interests in:

  • arranging the provision of legal services, administrative, corporate, trust arrangements or other consultancy services to you;
  • managing our business and relationship with you or your company or organization;
  • understanding and responding to inquiries and client feedback;
  • improving our services and offerings;
  • receiving and referring information from and to companies and/or associate firms with whom we co-operate for shared clients;
  • enforcing relevant terms of engagement, our website and other terms and conditions;
  • ensuring our IT and communication systems and premises are secure;
  • ensuring debts are paid.

6. DISCLOSURES OF YOUR PERSONAL DATA

We may disclose your information with others as follows:

  • Firms with whom we co-operate in relation of companies: we may share your personal data between company entities, including their management, lawyers, staff and contractors in order to provide legal advice and legal, administrative, corporate, trust and other services and for administrative, billing and other business purposes;
  • Clients: if we have collected your personal data in the course of providing legal, administrative, corporate, trust or other services to any of our clients, we may disclose it to that client and where permitted by law, to others for the purpose of providing those services;
  • Trusted third parties: we may share your personal information with certain trusted third parties which provide services to MSCS, such as suggested (including preferred) professional lawyers advisers and auditors, suppliers and processors to whom we outsource certain support services, IT service providers, software providers, communication suppliers. We shall take measures to protect the confidentiality and security of the personal data in such circumstances;
  • Third parties which provide professional services to your company or organization provided we are requested by you or your company or organization to do so;
  • Law enforcement bodies and regulators: courts, tribunals, or other competent authorities in accordance with legal requirements or to exercise or defend a legal claim. We may be required to disclose your information to comply with legal or regulatory requirements;
  • Any party as needed in connection with legal proceedings
  • Your company or organization: in relation to us providing legal, administrative, corporate, trust and other services;
  • Screening service providers, financial institutions and regulatory bodies: so that we can comply with legal obligations in relation to the prevention or protection of crime, fraud, anti-money laundering, sanctions screening and other required checks;
  • Registrars of public records: when we have a legal obligation to proceed with any registration in public records.

Otherwise, we will only disclose your personal data when you direct us or give us permission, when we are required by applicable law or regulations or judicial or official request to do so, or as required to investigate actual or suspected fraudulent or criminal activities.

7. PERSONAL DATA ABOUT OTHERS

In some cases, you may provide personal data to us about other people (such as your customers, directors, officers, employees, shareholders or beneficial owners). You must ensure that you are entitled to disclose that personal data to us and that, without taking any further steps, we may collect, use and disclose that personal data as described in this Privacy Policy. In particular, you must ensure that the individual concerned is aware of the various matters detailed in this Privacy Policy, as those matters relate to that individual.

8. DATA TRANSFERS OUTSIDE THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AREA

Other than disclosures in accordance with section 6 above, we shall not transfer your personal data outside the European Economic Area (EEA).

9. DATA SECURITY

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered, disclosed used or accessed in an unauthorised way.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

10. DATA RETENTION

Personal data may be kept on our personal IT systems, those of our contractors or in paper files.

We will only retain your personal data for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or reporting requirements. We will further retain your personal data where required for MSCS to assert or defend against legal claims until the end of the relevant retention period or until the claims in questions have been satisfied.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or other requirements.

11. WHAT INFORMATION IS COLLECTED FROM THE WEBSITE VISITORS

MSCS CONSULTANTS LTD collects and processes personal data related to individual visitors of our website and fills in the role of the Controller for this specific set of information. Personal data collected by third parties that remain legally and economically independent from MSCS CONSULTANTS LTD do not fall within the scope of this definition. Please refer to our Cookie Policy for further information. During the course of your visit to our website, the following types of personal data is collected:

(a) Due to the use of cookies on our website, MSCS CONSULTANTS LTD may obtain information about a website visitor’s computer and about a website visitor’s number of visits to and use of our website. This includes information on the website visitor’s IP address (Internet Protocol), geographical location, internet access services provider, browser type, referral source, length of visit and number of page views.

(b) In the course of using the contact form provided in the “Contact Us”- section, MSCS CONSULTANTS LTD obtains personal information relating to an individual website visitor.

(c) For the purpose of subscribing to our website services, email notifications and/or newsletters MSCS CONSULTANTS LTD may obtain personal information and data related to the individual website visitor.

(d) any other information that a website visitor chooses to send to us.

(e) Finally, telephone calls may be recorded for training and monitoring purposes.

12. YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS

Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data.

If you wish to exercise or discuss any of the rights set out above, please contact the Data Privacy Manager as listed above in this Policy. We may require proof of your identity prior to giving effect to those rights.

You have the right to:

Request access to your personal data. This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.

Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.

Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.

Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.

Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios:

  • If you want us to establish the data’s accuracy.
  • Where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it.
  • Where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.
  • You have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.

Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.

Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.

Right to lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority in Cyprus, the Office of the Commissioner of Personal

Data (www.dataprotection.gov.cy).

13. DIRECT MARKETING

We may use the information you give us for direct marketing from us only if you give us your consent. You can opt-out of receiving direct marketing from us at any time by sending an email to the Data Protection Manager using the details set out at the beginning of this policy.

14. CHILDREN

We do not knowingly collect information from children or other persons who are under 14 years old. If you are under 14 years old, you may not submit any personal data to us.

15. CHANGES TO THIS POLICY

This Privacy Policy was last updated in May 2018. This policy may be changed from time to time to reflect changing legal requirements or change in our processing practices.  If we change anything important about this policy, we will highlight those changes at the beginning of the policy.

16. HOW TO CONTACT US

If you would like more information about the way we manage personal data that we hold about you, please contact our Data Privacy Manager as set out at the beginning of this policy.