The legal position is actually quite simple but it requires explanation.

When PoTUS Trump announced that the requirements for US companies to register their so-called "ultimate beneficial ownership" was to be abolished, FinCEN did as it was told. But what it did not do, and what it now indicates it will enforce, was to tell businesses that are required to undertake effective Know Your Customer that they didn't need to do it for those purposes.

FinCEN mangles its concepts, refering to "shell companies" when the KYC requirements apply to all companies and it bizarrely refers to "non-financed purchases" when everybody knows that using a loan to purchase a property and repaying the loan out of laundered proceeds is a long established method of laundering.

Also, this Order is limited to title insurance companies - a concept known in the USA but not in many other jurisdictions. They are companies that insure against fraudulent or mistaken transactions.

"FinCEN renewed the GTOs that cover certain counties and major U.S. metropolitan areas in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New York, Texas, Washington, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. No changes have been made to jurisdictional coverage since the last issuance of these GTOs."

On the face of it, FinCEN has again fluffed it: it refers to real estate i.e. freeholds. What about long leases with an upfront premium and a peppercorn rent. For new leases, it seems a relatively low risk - except that in a recent case where a restaurateur took a lease only to find out after fitting out that the "landlord" was an undisclosed agent who did not have authority to grant a lease exceeding two years. The deal, done without lawyers, left the restaurateur out of pocket and out of the premises. The "landlord" skipped the country with the money and the landlord recovered the premises.

But in any case, the risk where the long lease is transferred to a new lessee is, in terms of money laundering risk, the same as in relation to real estate.

But, lacuna aside, the fact is simply this: in this limited regard, FinCEN is enforcing beneficial ownership rules using a back door.