Telecom, media and IT
Projects
Pepeliaev Group’s lawyers represented a client to which a tax authority had assessed additional profit tax on several grounds based on the results of a field tax audit. In doing so, the tax authority did not recognise a court decision which had been previously handed down in favour of the company, insisting that it had a right to specify additional grounds and ignore the previous court decision. Our lawyers managed to defend the client’s position on this point. The court stated that the tax authority should in any case comply with the previous decision of the court. And therefore the court has defended one of the fundamental principles of law that all state authorities should comply with court decisions. The total amount in dispute exceeded RUB 90 million.
Pepeliaev Group’s lawyers conducted legal due diligence of the company's tax and accounting reporting documents and identified potential tax risks, offering recommendations for mitigating them. This allowed significant claims from the tax authorities to be avoided when a field tax audit was conducted.
As part of a bankruptcy case, Pepeliaev Group's lawyers represented major telecommunications company Sitronics as a creditor, a former shareholder and a counterparty of the debtor, as well as acted for other companies within the group. Our lawyers successfully defended the client in nine proceedings in which transactions were contested. This made it possible to retain the group's assets worth RUB 2 billion. Moreover, our specialists managed to have a claim denied for secondary liability to be imposed on the client and on the debtor's director. The project is interesting because it involves multiple aspects and it forms case law relating to the regulations on secondary liability being applied over time.
The firm’s Antitrust Practice provided legal support to a major Russian mobile operator when it developed and implemented a compliance system. The project handled by Pepeliaev Group’s lawyers for MTS was among the first of its kind in Russia. It is now a positive illustrative case promoting the institution of antitrust compliance on the Russian market.
Our lawyers and IT specialists have developed the optimal way to obtain a licence for the technical protection of confidential information with minimal cost outlay on the equipment and technical means needed for this. In the opinion of the Russian Federal Service for Technical and Export Control (FSTEC), every company which uses technical means to process confidential information needs such a licence. Administrative liability as well as criminal liability are stipulated for conducting licensed types of activity without licence.