BELGIUM Law and Practice Contributed by: Valerijus Ostrovskis, Bogdan Evtimov, Michael De Boeck and Coline Cauvin, ACQUIS
Accordingly, a licence allowing the compensation of legal services is required on a case-by-case basis. However, note that – under EU sanctions against Rus - sia – it is now prohibited to provide legal services to legal entities in Russia, as an exception from the gen - eral freedom of services applicable in Belgium. Nonetheless, there is an exemption for services that are strictly necessary for the exercise of the right of defence in judicial proceedings and the right to an effective legal remedy under Article 5n (5) of Coun - cil Regulation (EU) No 833/2014. Additionally, Article 5n (6) of Council Regulation (EU) No 833/2014 states that the prohibition shall not apply to the provision of services that are strictly necessary to ensure access to judicial, administrative or arbitral proceedings in an EU member state, as well as for the recognition or enforcement of a judgment or an arbitration award rendered in an EU member state – provided that such provision of services is consistent with the objectives of this EU regulation and Council Regulation (EU) No 269/2014. Therefore, Council Regulation (EU) No 833/2014 excludes certain specific services from that prohi - bition, such that those services are not covered by the prohibition in this EU regulation. Consequently, in principle, it is not necessary to obtain a licence to per - form such services – provided that they remain within the scope of those exemptions. In practice, however, obtaining a licence is advisable to facilitate the co- operation from intervening banks to receive payment for such services. As a result, it is often advisable to seek regulatory licences for such services early on upon opening a client matter. 2.4 Reporting In Belgium, financial institutions must report imme - diately to the Ministry of Finance’s Treasury Depart - ment the persons or entities detected that are sub - ject to asset freeze measures. The National Bank of Belgium recommends that this reporting be made by the AML Compliance Officer (AMLCO). In such case, the AMLCO provides the General Administration of the Treasury with all the information at its disposal in order to enable the Treasury to carry out the necessary verifications – for example, a copy of the identity card or passport of the person concerned, as well as a ref -
erence to the regulation or decision that imposes the sanction and which includes the name of the person or entity that is subject to the sanction. Besides the asset-freezing measure and its notifica - tion to the Ministry of Finance’s Treasury Department, it may also be necessary to make a Suspicious Activ - ity Report (SAR) to the authority in charge of AML – namely, the Belgian Financial Intelligence Processing Unit ( Cellule de Traitement des Informations Finan- cières/Cel voor Financiële Informatieverwerking , or CTIF-CFI). 3. Recent and Future Legal Developments 3.1 Significant Court Decisions or Legal The Belgian courts generally adhere to the provi - sions of EU law and EU guidelines issued by the European Commission regarding the implementation and enforcement of EU restrictive measures and may refer preliminary references to the ECJ when in doubt on the proper interpretation of the provisions of EU restrictive measures. Despite several projects to increase the publication and dissemination of Belgian court’s case law, there is generally little publicly accessible case law on EU restrictive measures and export controls by the civil and administrative courts. As a general rule, disputes involving the impact of sanctions on a business trans - action may be litigated before competent civil courts. Infringements are prosecuted before criminal courts, and decisions on licences issued by the national com - petent authorities, often either the Ministry of Econo - my or the Ministry of Finance, may be challenged at the highest administrative court (the Council of State). Notable case law includes a widely reported convic - tion on appeal in 2019 of three Belgian companies and their directors for the export of large quantities of a chemical compound “isopropanol” between 2014-16 without having obtained the required export licences under the Syrian export controls regulation of 2012. In that case, two directors were ultimately convicted Developments Court Decisions
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