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Based on personnel documentation for a particular employee, employer’s local acts that define working conditions, lawyers will prepare options for actions and relevant draft documents (orders, agreements on termination, etc.) and will take part in discussing the selected dismissal variant between the employer and the employee.

It is all done for the parties to receive complete and objective view of the legal consequences.

The need for an independent personnel audit may arise on various grounds: buying and selling a business, identifying violations as a result of state inspection or as part of the company’s audit, identifying gaps in documenting individual personnel issues in case of a conflict between the employer and the employee, restoring order regarding changes in labor laws.

We are ready to analyze the required scope of issues with subsequent provisioning of a list of existing risks and recommendations for their elimination.

In order to avoid luring away employees by other firms, as well as the need to compete with your own employees, we suggest developing non-competition and non-solicitation agreements that will protect your business from loss of personnel and unfair competition with your business partners.

Belarus offers a number of attractive investment regimes, such as an investment agreement with the government, the High-Tech Park, the Great Stone Industrial Park, free economic zones and performance of activities in small cities. They all vary in the business sphere and the admission criteria. Various sets of benefits and preferences are proposed.

Choosing the suitable regime with optimal legal regulation is the key to the future project success and we will help with the right choice.

Prior to making the decision to start the project, it is necessary to understand how the business model complies with the legal regulation of the state, in which the investor plans to invest money.

We will perform the legal analysis of the model and will provide the assessment of your project in terms of its compliance with the norms of the Belarusian law and highlight the potential risks that may arise in the course of project implementation. We will also check the corporate, tax, customs, logistics and other aspects in the course of the analysis, after which we will provide recommendations on risk minimization and the business model optimization.

Conclusion of an investment agreement with the Republic of Belarus will help protect investments and get exemptions from the law and special preferences. The Arzinger team portfolio includes thirty investment agreements, in which we acted on behalf of foreign and local investors. An investment agreement can provide both a standard set of benefits and preferences for all investors, as well as special exemptions from the law and tax preferences.

The main investor’s objective is to conclude an agreement that will allow establishing partnership with the government and excluding potential disputes in the future. We know how to achieve it.

Implementation of any investment project is accompanied by conclusion of a number of legal documents, such as a residence agreement with the HTP or the Great Stone, an investment agreement, a PPP agreement, memoranda of cooperation. Conclusion of such documents is preceded by negotiations and discussions with government bodies and counterparties. A lawyer immediately understands the legal consequences of the decisions discussed in the context of the project in the negotiations.

Having extensive experience in holding of negotiations, we will help you correctly assess the risks prior to making a decision and register the result of negotiations in the form (memorandum, term-sheet, (non) binding offer) that will allow moving towards project implementation efficiently.

The project only starts with conclusion of the investment agreement. Investors’ typical errors are in the two aspects, i.e., contractual and legal.

Contractual relations with the government are a series of mutual rights and obligations stipulated in a single document, performance of which must be supervised in order to avoid an unconscious failure to observe the contractual provisions (the investment agreement implementation roadmap can help in this aspect). The legislative aspect of relations with the government is much broader. The investor must know and understand what liability it bears at each stage of the project (construction codes, environmental requirements, statements, occupational safety, and much more). Lawyers that are well familiar with a specific field of the investor’s activities will help avoid typical errors made by ignorance or negligence.

If a trademark, invention, utility model has been developed by you, then registration or obtaining a patent is required to protect the result of your work, as a rule. Such registration can be national or international. It can be obtained for various commodity headings.

Lawyers will help determine the very possibility of registering and protecting your intellectual property rights, will select the territory and the procedures required for it. We will perform the check for availability of similar objects that prevent protection of your intellectual property rights jointly with patent attorneys . As a result, you will receive a registration certificate or other right-setting document to protect your intellectual property rights in the corresponding jurisdiction.

If it is necessary to re-register the intellectual property rights to third parties, we will prepare an assignment agreement or another suitable contract and support passing the required registration procedures.

Every activity like production or import of branded goods, trade through retail stores, advertising can require conclusion of a license agreement with the copyright holder for the use of trademark rights and other intellectual property rights. Unlawful use of a trademark makes the right holder entitled to demand a compensation from the violator in the amount of up to 50.000 basic values (about EUR 118.000) without having to prove the damage amount.

As a rule, a license agreement involves long-term cooperation and the copyright holder’s supervision. Lawyers will help draw up a license agreement taking into consideration the business specifics, providing for measures of control and liability, conditions for early termination of the contract and reimbursement of damages.

If you acquire a franchise (an integrated business license), availability of special requirements for its content and registration in Belarus should be taken into consideration. We will verify the supporting documents in respect of all objects included into the license package, draw up a franchising agreement taking into consideration the requests of the parties, and support the registration procedures.

Competition is not always fair. Your success makes yout competitors sleepless and they may improperly use your trademarks, technologies, appearance of goods, production secrets and other intellectual property to gain a market advantage. We are ready to ensure comprehensive protection of your business against such attacks.

Firstly, each separate intellectual property object can be protected in accordance with the judicial, administrative and criminal litigation procedure. For example, unlawful use of a trademark makes the right holder entitled to demand a compensation from the violator in the amount of up to 50.000 basic values (about EUR 118,000) without having to prove the damage amount. You can prohibit the offender to perform specific actions in court, for example, advertising and offering a particular product for sale, to remove a counterfeit product (goods made with violations of your intellectual property rights) from sale.

Secondly, all actions of the violator in the aggregate may constitute unfair competition. Judicial bodies and the MART (Ministry of Antitrust Regulation and Trade) deal with unfair competition cases. We support our clients at all stages of such cases, up to forced execution of court statements.

Each company deals with processing of personal data, i.e., the data of its employees, customers and potential counterparties, casual contacts in forums and business meetings. Every year, the legislator for a stricter procedure for collecting, storing and processing of personal data. This issue is particularly relevant for the companies that exchange such data with their parent or subsidiary structures (for example, have centralized storage of data on all employees of a group of companies), or conduct business using the Internet (for example, using servers located outside Belarus), make mailings in the contacts database formed by them.

A separate group of issues is related to introduction of the GDPR starting from May 2018, which establishes special requirements and responsibilities when processing personal data of the EU citizens. Many Belarusian organizations that are subcontractors in the processing such data or directly perform business in the EU have already faced the need to develop a set of protective measures to avoid multi-million penalties.

Lawyers will perform the audit of the personal data to which your company has access, and will develop a set of measures of the organizational, legal and technical nature to ensure security of personal data and your business.

If you are aware of a real or potential violation of intellectual property rights and it involves commodity movement between countries (for example, the goods are imported using your trademarks or know-hows without your consent), then we can protect your business by registering such objects in the customs register of intellectual property rights.

Lawyers can be official representatives of the right holder before the customs authorities, participate in identification and forfeiture of counterfeit goods (goods manufactured in violation of your intellectual property rights).

Drafting an attractive and understandable contract for rendering of services, delivery, distribution, commission, service agreement or any other foreign trade transaction is only half the battle.

It is important that the agreement could withstand the litigation and that the mechanics of its execution does not contradict the Belarusian law.

If you have bought goods in the East and are going to resell it to the West without importing it to Belarus, you should check with your lawyers what opinion the law has about it (negative). Or if the counterparty insists on review of all disputes in future in London, we will tell whether you can agree on this.

Borders and taxation regimes are the two nuances, which cannot be but taken into consideration prior to commencement of trading with foreign partners.

We will examine your business model and highlight all its advantages and disadvantages, so that there are more advantages in it. 

The lawyers task is to ensure lawful and clear transboundary movement of commodities and money.

International trade is bound with risks associated with customs procedures for almost any business.

Classification of goods and determination of their customs value often causes of disputes with the customs authorities, the positive resolution of which largely depends on the relevant experience and practice of interaction with government agencies.

We will represent your interests in the customs authorities and protect you from unnecessary financial and time costs as much as possible.

The following permits must be preliminarily obtained for import and sales of a number of commodities, i.e., the quality certificate, the declaration of conformity or another opinion of government bodies. We will help determine the procedures that must be completed with respect to the goods and will ensure interaction with the certification bodies up to obtaining the required documents.

An anti-dumping investigation is a long and multi-stage process, which requires both in-depth deep analysis of the situation at the market for certain goods and knowledge of the law of the Eurasian Economic Union.

Our experts will draw up a statement about the initiation of an anti-dumping investigation, assist in preparation of the comments and filling out a questionnaire for the Eurasian Economic Commission that performs the investigation, and will take part in public hearings on the case on your behalf.

There are many nuances behind the variety of e-commerce forms (marketplaces, classifieds, online stores, mobile applications, social media): starting from the requirements for server placement and personal data processing and finishing with the requirements for logistics of goods and design of shipping documents.

We cooperate with companies that are different parts of this chain: payment systems, cloud solutions providers, logistics operators, consumer rights protection societies. This allows us taking a comprehensive look at your business model and suggest ways of its optimization.

Construction of major real estate facilities involves interaction of many participants, including the customer, the engineer, the general contractor, subcontractors, the design organization, etc. Turnkey contracts may be complicated with application of FIDIC books or foreign laws. No construction work goes smoothly, and the fault of only one party in violation of the facility completion and commissioning deadline is not obvious, as a rule.

The most common is the presentation of mutual claims for payment of a penalty for violation of the terms of performance of work and payment, quality claims. In difficult situations, a party can terminate the contract in accordance with the off-judicial procedure, and the second party can subsequently dispute such termination in court, claims damages. An expertise can be appointed to establish the scope and quality of works.

Lawyers perform legal examination of the dispute at the stage of its occurrence, assess the prospects of judicial consideration of the dispute, interact with technical experts, represent interests of the parties both during negotiations and during conflict resolution in court.