Kiev Arbitration Days 2014: Think Big!
The IV UBA international conference Kiev Arbitration Days 2014: Think Big! was held on 6-7 November 2014 in Kiev. In the space of two days more than 100 specialists from Ukraine and abroad had the chance to communicate on the issues and prospects for international commercial and investment arbitration. Opening the event, Oleksiy Filatov, deputy head of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine, noted that the sphere of improvement of system of execution of arbitration courts’ decisions needs additional attention. Arbitration will find its proper place in the reform of the court system initiated recently by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, assured Mr. Filatov. Mykola Gusak, judge of the Supreme Court of Ukraine, mentioned that Ukraine has got into debt over arbitration. Gaps in national legislation restrain development of arbitration and discredit Ukraine, while the State Executive Service of Ukraine (Bailiffs Service) enforces the negligible quantity of court decisions. Despite these facts Mr. Gusak expressed hope that Ukraine would be guided by the best patterns of the law in the world.
The program of the two-day conference was quite diverse and covered issues of states and state entities in arbitration, including arbitrability issues like trade sanctions and embargos, sovereign immunity from suits and enforcement, waiver and limits, tactics by state entities to disrupt arbitration; multiple parties, multiple contracts and consolidation of arbitration proceedings, joinder of additional parties; M&A disputes. Such sensitive issues as corruption in arbitration, in particular international approach to the definition of corruption, arbitrator’s investigative rights, duties and enforceability of awards and corruption were highlighted by Sergiy Gryshko, senior associate of CMS Cameron McKenna, Nick Neocleous, partner of Edwin Coe LLP and Olga Bischof, associate of Brown Rudnick. Moreover, specially invited speakers from Germany and Great Britain spoke about the opportunities and weaknesses of international law remedies: extra-territorial application of investment treaties, BITs and territorial sovereignty, BITs and sanctions and counter-measures and arbitration, dispute resolution under UNCLOS.
I All-Ukrainian Conference on Criminal Law and Process
On 14 November 2014 the UBA, jointly with the UBA, held the Inaugural All-Ukrainian Conference on Criminal Law and Process. The main aim of the conference was to highlight problems faced by attorneys in courts and during representation of a client’s interests in relationship with law-enforcement agencies. Sergiy Grebenyuk, attorney, counsel of Egorov Puginsky Afanasiev & Partners, analysed the criminal responsibility of legal entities. Legal entities bear criminal responsibility for perpetration by their authorized persons of certain crimes in the name and the interests of legal entities that have resulted in the receipt of illegal profit or have created conditions for receipt of illegal profit, have been directed at avoidance of responsibility stipulated by legislation. In the event of an authorized person not ensuring fulfillment of duties entrusted by law or constitutive documents to make measures to prevent corruption that resulted in perpetration of a crime, the legal entity also bears criminal responsibility. List of crimes, for offence of which the legal entity is responsible: legalization of incomes received by criminal means; application of means received by narcotic circulation; bribery of officials of a legal entity of public law; bribery of a person who renders public services; supply of official with illegal profit; abuse of influence; crimes against the basis of national security, state system and military crimes. Measures of criminal responsibility are fines, confiscation and liquidation.
