News

Within February 19-21 the building of the High Economic Court of Ukraine hosted the Fifteenth Ukrainian National Round of the Phillip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition.
The Phillip C. Jessup Competition is a competition among international law students, divided into oral and written simulated hearings under the rules of the International Court of justice – UN primary judicial organ. The Competition is held by International Law Students Association and constitutes the largest judicial competition in International public law in the world. Annually over 2000 students from over 600 law universities participate in it.
On the whole 10 teams were competing in 23 rounds of the Ukrainian round of the Competition to win. The peculiarity of this year Competition was two semi-final rounds that, according to experts, help to decide the winner from a great variety of teams in the most objective way.
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This year the competition case rise the matter of territorial sovereignty and international investments, and competence of the UN International in settlement of such disputes.
Attainment Level of Participants was evaluated by lecturers of Ukrainian higher education establishments, representatives of international organizations and lawyers of leading Ukrainian and Russian law firms.
Therefore, judges of Ukrainian Round of the Competition were, inter alia, officials of the USA Embassy in Ukraine, OSCE Projects Coordinator Office in Ukraine, Prosecutor’s General, as well as lawyers from leading Ukrainian and Russian law firms. Alina Karas, an associate represented Volkov Koziakov and Partners in the judiciary.
The International Rounds of 2010 Competition will be hosted by Washington within March 21-27.

The Kyiv National Taras Shevchenko University team trained by Volkov Koziakov & Partners lawyers won in the National Round of the ELSA Moot Court Competition (EMC²) on WTO law.
The trainers were Counsel Viktoriia Kotsiubska and Associate Anna Gladshtein. Senior Partner Sergii Koziakov became an academic advisor, and Managing Partner Oleksiy Volkov taught a public speaking master class to the team...

Volkov Koziakov and Partners has succeeded as a representative of OJSC Alfa-Bank (Russia) in the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine in obtaining permission to acquire a shareholding in PJSC Alfa-Bank (Ukraine).
In accordance with the data of National Bank of Ukraine by October 1, 2009 PJSC Alfa-Bank with its cumulative assets ranked number seven among 182 Ukrainian banks.
OJSC Alfa-Bank’s project was managed by partners Sergii Koziakov and Mykola Podpalov of Volkov Koziakov and Partners.

On January 28, 2010, Sergii Koziakov, Senior Partner of Volkov Koziakov & Partners participated in the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine’s (the AMCU) extended meeting on summarizing key takeaways for the last year and setting priorities for the year 2010.
During the meeting the acting Chairman of the Committee, Oleksandr Melnychenko, presented the 2009 AMCU Work Statement. According to the Statement, in 2009 the AMCU brought 1502 abuse of dominance cases, 608 concerted actions cases, 734 cases involving anticompetitive actions of government bodies, and 180 unfair competition cases (about 40 percent out of which involved deceptive advertising).
Most of the violations were detected in the markets of oil, agriculture, pharmaceutics, transportation, and in the course of tender offers procurement.
Within his speech Sergii Koziakov has directed attention of the participants present at the meeting to the high quality of the report analytics, as well as to the conclusions and suggestions that may be of use to AMCU officials, as well as to wide variety of professionals, whose work is closely connected with that of Committee’s. Koziakov believes that in 2010 the AMCU should pay more attention to development of its information resources. More specifically, enhancement is desired in that part, which could be useful for experts, including those who are working for the companies under the investigation.

On December 15 the briefing on Perspectives of Court Reform in Ukraine has been held in the Interfax-Ukraine Information Agency. The participants of the briefing were the judge of the High Court of Ukraine, deputy chairman of the Judicial Council of Ukraine Aleksandr Volkov, deputy Minister of Justice of Ukraine Volodymyr Bogatyr, partner of International Law Group Astapovlawyers Oleg Malskyy, partner of Pavlenko and Poberezhnyuk law group Larysa Poberezhnyuk and attorney at law of Volkov Koziakov and Partners Lesya Kovtun.
During the briefing its participants has pointed out existing problems of legal proceedings, discussed the expertise of court system reorganization based on (Legal) Court Reform Concept 1992 and Concept of Legal Proceedings Development for Strengthening of Justice in Ukraine in accordance with European Standards 2006, reviewed existing document connected with court system reorganization, and presented their view of court reform...

On 11-12 December 2009 there was held a visit of Chairman of the Institute for the Danube Region and Central Europe, President of the European Forum Alpbach, the Rector of the Salzburg University of Applied Sciences, former Vice-Chancellor of Austria, adviser to the Czech EU Presidency, Erhard , and President of the Representative Office of Robert Schumann Fund in the Czech Republic, Jana Śimkova.

The purpose of the visit was the discussion with the initiative group of the European Forum Alpbach in Ukraine of the issues on cooperation with the leading universities of our country in the field of EU law study.

In the course of the visit Mr. E. Busek had a meeting with Senior Partner Sergii Koziakov of Volkov Koziakov & Partners and Associate Alina Karas. During the meeting the participants discussed the issue concerning the foundation of EU summer law school and the European integration, including the participation of Ukrainian law firms in this project.

Partner of Volkov Koziakov and Partners, Roman Drozhanskyi, has participated in the second annual conference Mergers and Acquisitions in Ukraine held November 27. The conference was attended by representatives of Ukrainian law firms, investment companies and banks.
The conference attendees brought forth the items on agenda concerning simplification of the Ukrainian corporate legislation (specifically, in bank mergers), M&A market trends on the back of economic crisis, use of foreign law in cross-border transactions, and some features of legal due diligence in different types of deals.

On 25 November 2009 the round-table discussion devoted to issues of legal intellectual property expertise was held under the auspices of Volkov Koziakov & Partners and organized by Conference House and the Experts Bureau for Intellectual Property.
Legal experts, judges, representatives of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine and the State Department for Intellectual Property, attorneys at law and lawyers took part in the round table meeting.
At the beginning of the event Oleksiy Volkov, managing partner of Volkov Koziakov & Partners, spoke to the round-table participants emphasizing the relevance and importance of legal expertise procedures issues. The procedure of training and qualification of legal experts, agents of legal and research activities, legal experts reject, repeated and additional expert examinations and methodological support of legal experts examinations appeared to be the most discussed issues.
Olena Hladyuk, an attorney assistant of Volkov Koziakov & Partners, reported on the procedural difficulties of setting and execution of the legal expert examination. The report included the points of expert institution choice, involvement of specialists to draft the expert report, cost and terms of expert examinations. The reporter highlighted the issues regarding qualification requirements to an expert, procedure of expert’s qualification, option of involvement of patent attorney and officials of state institutions responsible for intellectual property defense as experts...

Associate of Volkov Koziakov and Partners Olena Hladyuk has participated in the seminar Taxation of Permanent Establishments held November 26 and arranged by IFA Ukraine (International Fiscal Association).
The participants of the seminar discussed the issues concerning peculiarities of permanent establishments taxation, exemption for preparatory and support activities, risk exposure pertinent to foundation of permanent establishments in Ukraine and requirements to ‘appearance’ in foreign jurisdictions. Special focus was laid on the concept of agency permanent establishment, principle of non-discrimination in taxation of permanent establishments in Ukraine, and challenging issues on the permanent establishment financing.

The first official visit of the IBA management took place on 15-16 November. During the first day of their visit the delegation chaired by the President Fernando Peláez-Pier held a meeting with TOP-management of leading Ukrainian law firms. Volkov Koziakov & Partners was represented at the meeting by Sergii Koziakov. The second day of the IBA delegation’s visit was devoted to meetings with the management of leading legal organizations of Ukraine and state authorities.