The XIII Kazakhstan forum of corporate lawyers started in Almaty, co-organized by the National Chamber of Entrepreneurs "Atameken".

One of the key speakers of the Forum was the Vice-Chairman of the Board of the NCE Rustam Zhursunov. He focused on the work on solving system problems of Kazakhstan business.

In this direction, the National Chamber works in close contact with the Supreme Court, the General Prosecutor's Office and the Agency for Civil Service and Anti-Corruption.

“There are 4 main directions for working with the Supreme Court. These include conducting analytical work, introducing new digital technologies, carrying out legal education and information interaction. On the first point, more than 2,540 court decisions were analyzed, on the basis of which system problems were identified. The most common questions are found in 7 areas - these are disputes over tax and customs issues, in the areas of public procurement, ecology, bankruptcy and rehabilitation, disputes with akimats and quasi-state companies. We have proposed strengthening business protection mechanisms, introducing to the judicial practice the submission of the National Chamber of Methodological expert opinions in the tax and customs spheres. A pilot project on tax and customs disputes has been proposed to be launched in Astana. These proposals are now being worked out jointly by us,” - Rustam Zhursunov said.

The speaker paid special attention to the introduction of new digital technologies in the legal sphere.

technologies in the legal sphere. “Although traditionally the field of jurisprudence is considered one of the most conservative, there is still a wide field for artificial intelligence. These are document checks, legal field monitoring, and compliance control. The NCE expressed its willingness to launch a pilot for preliminary technical and economic evaluation. Work has already been done on the transfer of court decisions in the amount of more than 300 thousand documents for their further conversion into an electronic database. The preliminary deadline for system implementation is July 31, 2019. At the same time, the ongoing work with the Supreme Court within the framework of legal education will have a positive effect on improving the legal literacy of entrepreneurs,” - Rustam Zhursunov said.  

He said that the National Chamber together with the “BestProfi” company developed the “Contract Designer” project, which is integrated into the “Personal account of the entrepreneur”. It provides free access to 100 templates of the most popular and legally valid documents.

“We also analyzed the application of risk management systems for 6 state agencies, which revealed a number of shortcomings: non-conformity of state control objectives, preservation of the right of election of inspectors, state bodies do not analyze the results of control in order to avoid repeated violations and a number of other points. The state bodies were instructed to revise the relevant orders,” - Rustam Zhursunov said.

On the website of the National Chamber there is a section entitled “Business and Law”, where any entrepreneur can get familiarized with all the proposed changes in legislation, leave comments on all drafts of normative legal acts submitted to "Atameken" for issuing expert opinions, as Rustam Zhursunov explained.

A significant part of the initiatives of "Atameken" is taken into account in the new Tax Code. 83% of 1150 amendments were supported. Currently, the National Chamber is considering issues of reducing the load on the salary budget and the use of pre-trial practice.

“Thus, at one of the meetings of the Appeals Commission, when an entrepreneur appealed the issue of severance tax on hydrocarbons, members of the Commission applied the principle of good faith for the first time due to the unresolved issue of the use of mineral tax rates when transferring subsoil use rights. As a result, the Commission rendered a decision in favor of the entrepreneur, and the additional amount of the severance tax is to be canceled, which is more than 5 million tenge,” - Rustam Zhursunov said.

Together with the Agency for Civil Service Affairs and interested government agencies, work is being actively carried out to protect the rights and legitimate interests of foreign and national investors. The project "Protecting business and investments" has been launched.

“The project’s strategy is based on testing and implementing preventive anti-corruption mechanisms through “anti-corruption support” for each business project. Maintenance takes place within the framework of the accession of businessmen and investors to the Agreement. At the same time, the investor himself undertakes the obligations of fair business, without corruption and “zero tolerance” to any of its manifestations. Support of 130 projects of domestic and foreign investors for a total amount of over 5 trillion tenge has begun. In 2018, it is planned to commission another 32 investment projects,” - Rustam Zhursunov said.

The institute of legal entities of public law is actively studied by “Atameken”. Over the past two years, the NCE has conducted a large-scale study of the experience of OECD countries and a number of post-Soviet states on reforms of the public sector of economic management, optimization of the state apparatus, increasing its professionalism and customer focus.

On the same day, at the Forum, on behalf of the National Chamber of Entrepreneurs "Atameken", lawyers were awarded who took an active part in the work on the protection of the rights of entrepreneurs and legislative activity.