On 2 November 2016, the Law of Ukraine "On Introduction of Changes to Some Legislative Acts of Ukraine in respect of Improvement of State Registration of Rights to Immovable Property and Property Rights Protection" No. 1666-VIII aimed at the protection of assets against illegal alienations and prevention of hostile takeovers came into effect.

The Law sets new requirements as to the actions aimed at making changes to state registers:

·         state registration is conducted irrespective of the location of a legal entity or natural person, however, within the Regions, city of Kyiv. Exception - if documents have been submitted in electronic form;

·         authenticity of signatures on the decisions amending details of a legal entity (e.g, minutes of the meetings), constituent documents, deed of transfer and distribution balance sheet of a legal entity as well as on the statements of company participants declaring their withdrawal from the company must be notarized. Notaries have been recommended to indicate that the facts contained in such documents have not been verified by the notary, i.e. only signatures are certified;

·         it is the notaries' responsibility during notarization to use data from unified and state registers and to immediately notify the owner of an immovable property on intention to register amendments related to such property. Please note that currently it is not technically possible to do that, however, the Ministry of Justice has been testing a new system that will allow that;

·         registration actions may be suspended upon the owner's request or by a final court decision prohibiting the registration actions to be taken;

·         digital signature may be subscribed in the personal presence of the subscribers only.

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