Analytics and brochures
Russia has been going through a volatile period the past few years, as the country continues to suffer from depressed oil prices and the effect of Western sanctions imposed following Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea that prohibit European and American companies from doing business with numerous wealthy Russian individuals (or companies owned by them), and prohibit specified Russian companies in the financial, energy, and defense sectors from accessing US and EU markets. While the international law firms are struggling to stay afloat, domestic Russian law firms have been doing just fine. Pepeliaev Group Managing Partner Sergey Pepeliaev says his firm is doing “brisk” business as well and increased in size in both 2017 and in 2018.
In February 2018, Russia’s Constitutional Court ruled that trademark owners’ claims against parallel importers may themselves be “abusive” if they unjustifiably limit importers into Russia or if the owners’ branded goods are overpriced. The Court also ruled parallel imported goods may only be confiscated and destroyed if they fail to meet required standards of quality, safety, health, environment or culture. The court effectively ruled that IP rights should not be used to limit competition, even where rules offer the opportunity to seek compensation from the parallel importer, said Elena Sokolovskaya, head of the antitrust practice at Pepeliaev Group.
Cases are being encountered ever more frequently when anticompetitive agreements during bidding processes are entered into and implemented using auction robots. Bad-faith participants of procurement are developing more sophisticated schemes for breaching antitrust prohibitions and are able to cover the digital traces of anticompetitive conduct. The regulator in turn is learning to identify such traces, to document them and to prove robotic collusions. Examples of the successful fight against this are already available.
The majority of my colleagues agree that the most spectacular event of the VIII Saint-Petersburg International Legal Forum was the one where the Russian telecommunication company Megafon presented its legal robot. Not only did the robot appear in front of the public, but also represented one of the disputing parties in a mock case.
It is hoped that the tax treaty between Russia and Hong Kong will improve economic relations between the countries and increase their level of transparency. Rustem Ahmetshin, a Senior Partner at Pepeliaev Group for Bloomberg BNA.
On 3 October 2017 the Russian Ministry of Finance published the draft “Main directions of the budgetary, tax and customs tariff policies for 2018 and for the planning period of 2019 and 2020”. The document states that it is necessary for Russia to reduce its dependency on the export of oil. Over the next several years this will have to be accomplished in difficult economic and international conditions. New investments in the country's economy will need to be attracted.