Ministerial Decisions
Issuing the Executive Regulations of Sultani Decree No. 31/96 on determining the rules for investing the funds of the Public Authority for Social Insurance and pension funds.
A list of the state pension funds to which these regulations apply is given in Article 2 of this decision.
Issued on 13 June 2017. Effective from the day after the publication date.
Issuing the licensing and working system at the site of the customs territory in the Special Economic Zone at Duqm.
Ministerial Decisions
Ministry of Manpower
Ministerial Decision No. 187/2017
Continuing the suspension of permits for the temporary recruitment of non-Omani manpower in certain professions. Permits are to be suspended for salesmen/marketing professionals and purchasing representatives, as specified in MD 608/2013 and MD 381/2016. The suspension period is to be extended by a further 6 months with effect from 1 June.
Issued on 29 May 2017.
Ministerial Decision No. 188/2017
Legal Developments
Potential hourly wage system
The Ministry of Labor and Social Development (MOL) is discussing a potential new employment system for Saudi employees named “Flexible Work” (Flexible Work). Flexible Work will be a system whereby an employee may be paid an hourly wage on a weekly basis in arrears, and various entitlements currently required under the Labor Law for conventional employees would not be required, such as:
On 17 May 2017, the UK Supreme Court handed down judgment in proceedings - commonly known as the Waterfall I litigation - to determine claims with regard to the estimated £8 billion surplus arising in the estate of Lehman Brothers International (Europe) (LBIE).
On 28 March 2017, the Enactment of Extra-Statutory Concessions Order 2017[3] was made which, amongst other things, enacts ESC3.20. The Order came into force on 6 April 2017.
ESC3.20 disapplied the clawback of input tax credit for an insolvent business that has not paid (or not fully paid) the consideration for a supply. New section 26AA of the Value Added Tax Act 1994 gives broadly the same effect as ESC3.20 in that it “turns off” the disallowance of input tax in cases of non-payment of consideration if:
During the past several weeks the Azerbaijani Parliament has adopted a number of laws, introducing amendments to the Law On Banks, the Civil Code, the Civil Procedure Code, the Administrative Procedure Code, the Law On Telecommunications and the Law On Licenses and Permits.
We summarize the major aspects of above-mentioned amendments below.
Law “On Introducing Amendments to the Law 'On Banks'"
A recent challenge in the High Court by liquidators to recover assets from a director of an insolvent company has highlighted various points of company law. In particular, the court had to consider directors' authority, share buybacks, and transactions between a company and its directors.
The claimant (D) was the managing director and controlling shareholder of the defendant company (the Company). The Company at first had one other director, D's wife, and later a second (W).
The liquidator challenged three transactions:
On April 7, 2017, the Azerbaijani Parliament passed in the first reading a Draft Law “On Introducing Amendments to the Law "On Banks" (the “Draft Law”).
Background
Peter Oreb and Ingrid Webber were directors of a group of companies supplying workforce solutions to some of the largest corporations in the world. Four of the companies went into liquidation. Prior to the companies going into liquidation, Peter and Ingrid resigned as directors of those companies.
The insolvency service has published the latest figures for complaints against insolvency practitioners made to the Complaints Gateway during 2016. The statistics indicate that the Gateway has received a reasonably steady level of complaints since it was established in 2013 but promisingly for practitioners the Gateway does appear to be weeding out more complaints with the Gateway having rejected 29% of complaints in 2016, compared to 18% in the Gateway's first year.
The Stats