Legislative news digest: LEGAL HOTLINE 14.11.2019

New anti-raider law took effect

On 2 November 2019, the Law of Ukraine “On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of Ukraine on Protection of Ownership Rights” took effect.

The novels are aimed at protecting the rights of real estate and business owners and include, in particular:

• Termination of activity of accredited agents, that is, municipal enterprises at local self-government authorities and local state administrations;
• Presentation of notarised documents, on the basis of which state registration is carried out, on special forms of notarial documents, which is an additional protection of such documents from forgery;
• The state registrar accesses to the State Register of Rights through multilevel authentication;
• Stricter liability for violations in state registration.

Amendments to customs code

On 7 November 2019, the Law of Ukraine “On Amendments to the Customs Code of Ukraine Regarding Some Issues of Operation of Authorized Economic Operators” took effect.

The law introduces the institute of Authorized Economic Operators (AEO), which should ensure transparent and fair rules of interaction of business with the customs.

The Program of Authorized Economic Operators is aimed at:

• Accelerating customs procedures (reduced risk; simplified declaration procedure);
• Improving customs services (possibility of delivering goods immediately to the warehouse of the company; notification of the physical examination of cargoes);
• Cost savings (reduction of delays on the border; reduction of costs for customs terminal services);
• Predictability of doing business (transparent and clear customs clearance procedures; security upgrade and improvement of communication between partners in a supply chain).

Unified state register open in full

On 6 November 2019, Minister of Justice of Ukraine Denys Maliuska signed Order No. 3412/5 “On Amendments to the List of Information to be Disclosed in the Form of Open Data Owned by the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine”.

From now on, the list of information to be disclosed in the form of open data is extended, in particular, the following data are also available: date and number of the record on state registration of the legal entity; data on assignees; data on standalone units of the legal entity.

According to the Order, part of the information will be updated in the register on a daily basis, and part of the information will be updated once every five days. The full register is planned to be published in the open data format once a week.

Land turnover monitoring system presented

On 4 November 2019, the Ministry of Economy presented the concept of land use and turnover system, which is aimed to ensure transparency and control in land relations.

The monitoring system will contain complete information on the transfer of land title, land owners, the value of sales and lease agreements, etc.

Further steps in the implementation of the system are to ensure data exchange between state registers containing relevant information (State Service of Ukraine for Geodesy, Cartography and Cadastre (StateGeoCadastre), Register of Real Rights, Register of Legal Entities, etc.) and to create a software product that will analyse these data and show them to representatives of state authorities and the public.

In fact, the system should be able to provide the opportunity to see on-line what is happening with land use and land ownership.