Around the bloc: Lifestyles of the Rich and Armenian
Where did the sons of the country’s finance minister get the money for a mansion in one of LA’s most exclusive neighborhoods?
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Where did the sons of the country’s finance minister get the money for a mansion in one of LA’s most exclusive neighborhoods?
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Corrupt behaviour is a common practice with negative effects on the whole of society. For instance, if a company wins a public procurement contract in an unfair way, it enriches itself not only at the expense of competition, but also at the expense of the whole of society, as the best applicant has not necessarily been selected within such a procurement. The same applies in the case of a supplier launching an unsafe product onto the market, threatening the health of everyone who buys it. In order to prevent such malpractice and eliminate their negative effects, the cooperation of persons aware of such behaviours is necessary. In order to ensure such cooperation, however, the existence of instruments protecting whistle-blowers against various sanctions (especially by employers) is necessary. As Slovak legislation did not include a regulation of procedures for reporting malpractice and protecting whistle-blowers, a new law aimed at solving such issues was enacted in October, 2014. The given legal regulation took effect on January 1, 2015. This paper endeavours to provide basic knowledge of the environment that the given regulation entered, as well as information on the possibilities of individuals to protect social interests on its grounds.
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Despite the important role in increasing efficiency of the State aid control and in revealing the existence of State aid, third parties in EU State aid procedures are considered merely as a “source of information”. This article provides a critical analysis of the reforms of State aid procedures from a third party perspective. The reforms are disappointing maintaining the bilateral character of State aid procedures between two main parties the Commission and the Member States concerned and leaving third parties with very limited procedural rights. In addition the hard-law reform of the State aid procedures of 2013 increases the procedural duties of third parties without procedural guarantees and extends the investigatory powers of the Commission.
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The policies of International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) have made significant impact in most developing countries, particularly in South of the Sahara. Foreign direct investment (FDI) is one of the policies spearheaded by these institutions. Countries like Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya, have experienced a wave of economic reforms in recent years. These reforms, to a larger extent, which have been inspired by International Institutions, have recently faced with a magnitude of concerns which is expressed in terms of whether the right kind of pre-conditions exists for these measures since some of the measures don’t produce the desired outcomes in some developing countries. The thrust of the evaluation has been on whether privatization through Public Private Partnership presents a profitable policy in Tanzania. In other words, if there is any evidence of significant performance of State Operated Enterprises after privatization. This research takes stock of the evidence in pre and post three privatized companies and shows that in competitive environment privatization has been a resounding success in improving performance of public enterprises.
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Besides influences economic, political and social on the standard form of individual employment contract, which led to a more flexible regulatory framework in the field of labor relations, an important factor that marked trend evolving contract atypical employment is the number of women who entered the labor market in recent decades. Because most strongly feminized form of employment non-standard employment relationship part-time, this article captures the issues most important about the relationship work part-time and the gender factor, the impact of this form of employment on the size women's social and level of protection provided by labor law and social protection rules in light of states that have agreed to support and legitimize this form of employment. Also, the circumstances of the most important, determining the choice of women in terms of hiring part-time, rationales justifying the strong influence of gender in hiring part-time, along with the identification of negative consequences of the feminization of this atypical forms of work are important factors that are discussed in this article.
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Any subcontracting in public procurement contracts is subject to the priorapproval of the Contracting authority. This is a manifestation of excessive powers which holds the administration in public law contracts. Therefore, the public contract is liable totermination as soon as the Contracting authority finds by any means whatsoever subcontracting occult on the work site. However, as soon as subcontracting is allowed, the Contracting authority appears foreign to its implementation, leaving the parties freely fulfill their contractual obligations. The situation of the contractor who is generally a small business or PMI is abandoned to the will of the contracting party of the public person, usually powerful multinationals. The Contracting authority displays a certain neutrality inboth the quality of work performed by the contractor in terms of payment of the latte r. Contractual freedom seems to have taken precedence here on the powers of control anddirection of which is coated the Contracting authority in the execution of public contract, to the detriment of the subcontractor. A reform of the Government Procurement Code and subsequent legislation is needed to better protect the interests of the subcontractor. This article is striving to clarify the relationship Contracting authority-Contractor-subcontractor in works contracts. It demonstrates that the subcontractor weaker party tothe contract must be better protected so as to safeguard the contractual solidarism which seems to be based the existence of the outsourcing contract.
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This article discusses the post 1994 rights-based approach to transformation. Civil and political rights and socio-economic rights are conceived as central tenets to South Africa’s transformative Constitution, 1996. The Constitution was fundamentally tasked with transforming society to bring about substantive social and legal justice, peace, political stability and reconciliation among South Africans. This culminated in a new legal culture, elevating hopes that socio-economic problems largely inherited from the past would be altered. Thus, this article examines the extent to which norms and the law in the Constitution normalizes people’s socio-economic conditions. It utilizes notable entrenchment and eventual justiciability of socio-economic rights as noticeable attempt to proffer a panacea to prevailing socio-economic instabilities. It has been observed that first and second generation rights are interrelated and mutually supportive towards the course of transformation. However, it is asserted that the commended normative framework is struggling to ward off the country’s social and economic problems owing to persistent poverty problem. Thus, real transformation will remain an elusive dream if poverty is not eliminated.
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Companies participate at the civil circuit by concluding legal documents. According to the principle regarding the separation of powers in the company's governance, a distinction must be made between the duties of the company's shareholders general assembly and the duties of the administrator. Thus, shareholders general assembly holds the deliberative power of the company and determines the working strategy of the company, whereas the administrator expresses, executes the will of the shareholders general assembly and concludes legal documents in the name and on the behalf of the company. Such legal documents are considered the documents of the company itself. From the perspective of the two management bodies, we can ask ourselves what is the applicable sanction when the shareholders general assembly decides to nominate a third person to represent the company for the signing of a legal document? From a certain point of view this represents an extension of the legal powers, throughout the legal documents of the company's bodies (including the shareholders general assembly's resolutions) and a breach of the exclusive duties of the administrative bodies of a company. The applicable sanction regarding such legal documents is non-existence of legal acts.
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According to Article 14 EC, the European Union shall guarantee the freemovement of goods and services. In this regard, it is necessary that the entrepreneurs should be able to do their business throughout the internal market and to recover their receivables in due time. Therefore, that late payment represents an obstacle to the properfunctioning of the internal market. The Directive on combating late payment in commercial transactions, Directive 2000/35/EC is placed in the context of maintaining and developingan area of freedom, security and justice. This Directive governs all commercial transactions irrespective of whether they are carried out between private or public entrepreneurs or between entrepreneurs and public authorities, having regard to the fact that the latter handle a considerable volume of payments to business. It should therefore also regulate all commercial transactions between main contractors and their suppliers and subcontractors. This paper explores the legal framework on late payment of trade credit from the European legislation perspective.
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This article approaches the issue of delegation of powers from the general assembly of shareholders to the board of directors, respectively board of management of a stock company, the only one that accept such instrument. The purpose of the delegation is the celerity and flexibility of the decisions. The legal nature of delegation is the one of a mandate, limited without derogations to moving the headquarters, amending the secondary scope of activity, and increasing the share capital though new issued shares. When the lifting or limitation of the preemption right is also delegated, the shareholders decision of delegation must be adopted in the same conditions of quorum and majority with the decision of lifting and limiting the preemption right, which is three quarters of the share capital. Decisions of the board of directors, respective of the board of management regarding shareholders’ information, publicity, nullity and suspension will have the same regime as the decisions of the shareholders.Legal capacity to request the annulment of the decision adopted by delegation belongs to any shareholders. Delegation is given by the charter, within a limited authorized capital, or, for a listed company, by the general assembly’s decision. Authorized capital is the share capital that the company anticipates to achieve in a certain period of time. Authorizing the increase of the share capital in a temporal limit and a value limit makes the decision discretionary within such limits, shareholders implication being given prior, generic and abdicative, not for a particular operation.
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The article is dedicated to the overall presentation of contracts to which the law recognizes the power of enforcement, in a brief retrospect carried out through the Roman law and their evolution to the present day as they are found in the Civil Code or speciallaws that govern them. The contract is in effect, the conventional framework by which parties incur obligations and acquire rights in relation to each other, representing the materialization of the agreement of the parties and is only deemed validly concluded if the parties have expressed their consent freely and without undue influence. Contract partnersare free to insert any clauses they want in the Covent signed, provided that they do notcontravene to public order or morality. But the aim is to highlight both the power of the contract, and even more the importance of expressing the individual’s will on its fate. The importance of this legal act never contested, made the legislator invest it with the force ofl aw between the contracting parties. So in cases expressly stipulated by the rules of law, this legal act has been given the benefit of enforcement, however without prejudicing in anyway the principle of autonomy of will and without creating a contractual imbalance, privileges or discriminations.
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The Lisbon Treaty has considerably reinforced available tools to protect the European Union financial interests. One of them is a possibility of establishing a European Public Prosecutor’s Office. This organ shall be responsible for investigating, prosecuting and bringing to judgment the perpetrators of, and accomplices in, offences against the EU financial interests. There is also an option to extend the powers of the aforementioned organ to include serious crimes having crossborder dimension. In order to better understand the role that could be played by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, it is useful to analyze some earlier proposals in this regard. At the time of writing this article, one need to understand that the institutional architecture of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office and the ways of performing its tasks are still under discussion.
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The subject of the paper is an attempt to specify the relationship between two diametrically different ways of a tax duty termination – limitation in tax law and payment of tax, in the light of influence of such a relationship on termination of taxation proceedings. In the course of his considerations, the author has made a synthetic analysis of limitation and tax payment, and then he has established that the construction of the relationship in tax law indicates that the relationship of the two ways of the duty limitation is based on the rule of the exclusively one-time limitation of tax duties. At the same time, the construction of the relationship in tax law assumed in the doctrine allows for solving, e.g. the problem of influence of tax duty limitation by means of its payment upon the pending taxation proceedings before an appellate agency. The author has established that a taxation agency has then a possibility to pass one of the decisions provided by Art. 233 §1 and §2 of the Tax Regulations, not taking into consideration the lapse of the limitation final date.
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The grey market has existed almost always and everywhere, and to be more precise since introduction by the state a duty to pay tributes. The grey market in Poland is not a new phenomenon, but only in the 1980s it became an object of scientific research. The grey market is an important part of the economic life worldwide. The grey market requires fast and decided actions aiming at reducing its size, whereas the total liquidation of the grey market is unreal. It seems justified then to search for ways to limit it to the “natural” level. The aim of this paper is to indicate the areas where the grey market appears, to show the main reasons for its existence understood as an economic performance unreported for taxation and incomes not covered by the revealed sources of revenues. Thus, the grey market includes remunerative activity, of non-criminal character, performed without paying due duties and applicable taxes, and not complying with the binding legal norms.
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The text is about the unification and the codification of the law on joint-stock companies in Poland in the years 1918–1939. The author analyses the process of preparing the draft, which led to the President’s decree from March 22nd, 1928, Law on Joint-Stock Companies (Journal of Laws No. 39, item 383). This decree was subsequently included into the Commercial Code, which was passed as the President’s decree from June 27, 1934, part I (Journal of Laws No. 57, item 502). As the author endeavours to prove, the law on joint-stock companies was a common work of the Codification Committee, established in 1919, and the Ministry of Industry and Commerce. The main contribution to the works was made by professor Aleksander Doliński, who was chairman of the subcommittee of commercial law in the Codification Committee. Also dr. Witold Supiński, legal counselor in the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, played an important role. In the last phase of works on the Commercial Code, the contribution of professor Tadeusz Dziurzyński should be mentioned. The author then characterizes the basic grounds of Polish law on joint-stock companies. He expresses that the normative system, instead of concession system, was implemented (with some exceptions). Like other modern legal systems, the law did not construct the definition of the joint-stock company, but pointed out the important elements which differentiate it from other companies. The author examines these elements. In conclusion he expresses that Polish law on joint-stock companies was an original law, based on domestic experience of commerce. However, it referred to the German Handelsgesetzbuch from 1897 (§ 178–319 HGB).
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The formation of government procurement law during the Second Polish Republic maintained in inseparable connection with contract law. Such consistent development of those fields of law have been withhold in the early years of the Polish People’s Republic. It is generally emphasized that after 1948 the inadequacy of Polish Code of Obligations in relation to the new social and economical conditions became unmistakable. The terminal point of validity of the traditional understanding of “government procurement law” is marked as the date of entry into force of the centralized state planning in socialist economy Act of 19th April 1950. Independent contracts maintained only within the edge markets and on the margins of economic trade. The concept of “government procurement law” temporarily vanished from law and legal language. To summarize it must be noted that the legislations from the interwar years in the sphere of government procurement law are regarded as valuable creation of polish legislative theory.
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