CYPRUS Trends and Developments Contributed by: Constantinos A Adamides, Scordis, Papapetrou & Co LLC
Corporate Residence in the Context of Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments – Is it a Matter of a Mere Piece of Paper? In a landmark judgment issued by the District Court of Nicosia last September, the test of cor- porate residence in the context of recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments was thor- oughly examined. Introduction The case concerned an application filed in Cyprus by a Russian limited liability company (the “Russian Applicant Company”) in order to recognise a judgment allegedly issued by a Russian court against a Russian national and resident individual, now deceased (the “Russian Respondent”). The Treaty between the Republic of Cyprus and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on Legal Assistance in Civil and Criminal Matters of 19 January 1984 (the “Treaty”) was applicable. Article 27 of the Treaty provides that any applica- tion for enforcement of a judgment must be sub- mitted to the judicial authority at the place where the judgment was given (the State of Issue) in which case the application will be transmitted by the said judicial authority to the competent court of the other contracting state (the State of Enforcement). By way of an exception, Article 27 of the Treaty allows an applicant to submit the application for enforcement directly to the competent court of the State of Enforcement if the applicant has their permanent or temporary residence in the territory of the State of Enforce- ment. In the case in question the Russian Applicant Company was initially registered in Cyprus as a foreign company with a place of business in
Cyprus pursuant to the provisions of Section 347 of Companies Law, Cap. 113 (securing a relevant certificate of registration issued by the Registrar of Companies in Cyprus) and filed the application directly to the Cypriot Court (the Dis- trict Court of Nicosia). The Russian Respondent objected to the appli- cation by contesting, inter alia, the jurisdiction of the Cyprus courts. Residence – an issue of jurisdiction The Cypriot Court accepted the submissions put forward by the advocates for the Russian Respondent that the issue of residence per- tains to the jurisdiction of the court to exercise its powers under the Treaty, and further that the jurisdiction is not a floating issue but an issue which must be determined by reference to the time when the court is seised, citing in this regard a number of Cypriot court cases and an English court case brought to its attention including the Cypriot cases of VTB Bank (Open Joint-Stock Company) v Alekseyevich and another, Civil Appeal No 206/2014, 12/06/2020, Yushchen- ko Tatiana Nikolaevna v Borodin Andrey Frid- rihovich, Application No 5/2013, DC Limassol, dated 14 November 2014 and the recent English case of Derbyshire County Council v Mother and others [2023] 2 W.L.R. 1270. Corporate residence – the test Acknowledging that in taxation, in the case of an overseas trading corporation as well as in oth- ers cases, “the residence of a company is not determined by the application of a uniform test but a different meaning is given to those words in each of them” (Palmer’s Company Law, Vol. I, 1982, page 102, paragraphs 8-11), the Court ruled that reference to “residence” in Article 27 of the Treaty is not void of content since apart from the fact that as a condition it pertains to the
343 CHAMBERS.COM
Powered by FlippingBook