The agricultural sector plays a crucial role in the economy of our country, providing employment opportunities and paying taxes, and legal outsourcing for agribusiness can help optimize its operations by offering expert legal support tailored to the specific needs of this industry.
For the optimal development of agribusiness in Ukraine, high-quality legal support for its operations is essential.
All activities of an agricultural company, starting from its establishment, must be conducted in accordance with the requirements of the law. The signing of contracts for the sale of finished products, land leases, payment of wages, tax accounting – all of this must be done within the framework of the law.
Every manager faces challenges arising from inspections by various regulatory authorities, unlawful decisions and actions by tax and customs authorities, searches and seizures by law enforcement agencies, pressure from banking institutions, improper actions of contractors and dishonest competitors, and corporate conflicts. Quite often, one wrong decision can lead to multimillion-dollar financial losses or equivalent fines imposed by government agencies. Making a business decision is further complicated by the large number of laws and regulations governing legal relations in the agricultural sector, as well as the constant changes in legislation that deprive businesses of legal certainty.
To ease the operation of agribusiness, the WinnerLex Law Firm offers subscription-based legal services (legal outsourcing) for the activities of individual agricultural enterprises, as well as corporate groups (agroholdings).
Advantages of Legal Outsourcing Services
- Cost Savings and Tax Benefits. The Client can classify the payment for legal services as part of their operating expenses, thereby optimizing their profit tax obligations. The Client can legally save money on taxes and payroll payments for an in-house lawyer, as well as vacation pay, sick leave, and other mandatory employee benefits. Our law firm covers the costs for providing the workplace and operational needs of the lawyers (office equipment, mobile communication, office supplies, professional development).
- Guarantee of Continuous Uninterrupted Service. The law firm does not fall ill, does not go on annual leave or maternity leave, and does not resign. Therefore, our qualified specialists in relevant fields are always available to answer any of your questions.
- High Quality of Legal Services. After subscribing to legal services, the Client receives not just one narrow-specialized lawyer, but an entire team of professional attorneys with extensive experience across various areas of law, allowing for a comprehensive approach to solving every issue. Furthermore, the quality of legal services is directly supervised by the managing partner and advisors of the firm. All of this ensures a high level of service quality.
- Time Savings. By entrusting us with solving legal issues, business owners and top management can focus on running their business and generating profit. With subscription services, several multi-disciplinary lawyers (selected based on the specifics of the issue) can work on a task simultaneously, significantly reducing the time required for service delivery. Given our specialists’ extensive practical experience across a wide range of issues, we can offer “ready-made solutions” developed and tested for similar projects.
- Predictability of Costs and Client Reporting. A clearly defined budget (the payment for comprehensive legal services is made once a month at a fixed rate, according to the chosen service package) allows for more effective allocation of funds for other financial needs. Additionally, a detailed report on the work performed is provided to the client at the end of each month.
- Individual Approach to Each Client. The scope and focus of the services provided by our law firm within the framework of subscription-based service can be adjusted according to your needs.
- Additional Benefits of Attorney Assistance. According to the law, attorneys are strictly bound by attorney-client privilege, ensuring full confidentiality. To obtain information and documents necessary for providing legal assistance, an attorney has the right to send requests to any government bodies, local authorities, legal entities, and individuals, and their responses are mandatory.
- Loyalty Program. When signing a contract for subscription-based legal services, clients receive discounts on our other services. The discount size depends on the type of service package selected for legal outsourcing. Clients are also given priority in service delivery.
Legal Outsourcing for Agribusiness includes, in particular, the following services:
- Development of an optimal legal structure for running an agribusiness, managing a company or agroholding, and asset ownership (land bank, real estate, agricultural machinery);
- Protection of the client’s interests during the conclusion of forward supply contracts for agricultural products, foreign trade supply contracts, transportation and forwarding service contracts, future crop pledges, and agricultural receipts;
- Legal support during mergers and acquisitions in the agribusiness sector (merger and acquisition), conducting legal audits of agricultural enterprises (due diligence);
- Support for investment projects in the agribusiness sector, including the development and preparation of investment agreements, creation of joint ventures, making investments, subsequent reinvestment, and the return of previously invested funds;
- Anti-raider protection for agribusinesses;
- Legal support for the acquisition or obtaining the right to lease agricultural infrastructure (offices, grain storage facilities);
- Legal regulation of land use issues (land lease rights, lease relations tactics, agricultural servitudes, unclaimed shares, land share buyouts, land inheritance). Resolving land disputes;
- Providing legal assistance during inspections for compliance with land legislation, including issues related to unauthorized occupation of land plots, challenging decisions made following inspections;
- Providing legal assistance during inspections for compliance with sanitary legislation and regulations in the fields of plant protection, seed production, horticulture, and animal husbandry;
- Support for tax inspections, challenging tax notices and decisions. Legal assistance in taxation of agricultural producers and processing enterprises, including developing optimal tax planning schemes;
- Protection of agribusinesses from law enforcement actions (responses to inquiries, providing legal assistance during searches and interrogations, supporting criminal proceedings);
- Support for relations with banking institutions (credit, collateral, mortgage);
- Development of statutory documents, ensuring state registration of the creation, reorganization, and liquidation of legal entities of all organizational and legal forms;
- Claims work, including drafting and sending claims to debtors, taking steps to settle disputes out of court;
- Representation of the client’s interests in government and local government bodies;
- Participation in negotiations on behalf of the client with counterparties, suppliers, and partners;
- Legal assistance in labor and corporate conflicts.
Practice experience: 19 years
Specialization: litigation support, tax, customs and antitrust practices, agricultural law, IT and M&A
Practice experience: 21 years Specialization: support of economic, civil, labor and administrative disputes, energy
Practice experience: 11 years Specialization: tax, customs and corporate disputes, support of inspections, contractual activities
Practice experience: 6 years
Specialisation: business and civil law, tax and customs practice, corporate law, registration and reorganisation of business
Practice experience: 11 years Specialization: support of economic, civil, labor and administrative disputes, inspections
If you systematically require legal assistance, it may be advisable to consider legal outsourcing – subscription-based legal services, which will allow you to save on the costs of a full-time lawyer, their workplace, optimize taxation, avoid reliance on sick leaves, vacations, and other human factors, as well as receive higher-quality solutions for your legal issues.
To streamline land use, it is first necessary to conduct an audit of the land bank and check the land plots that are leased. It is also important to adjust the terms of the lease agreements to align with the interests of your enterprise. Proper contract management should be ensured: all lease payments, contract expiration dates, and the documents confirming these facts must be recorded. The procedure for working with landowners, concluding, performing, and renewing agreements should be clearly outlined in the company’s internal instructions.
Investigators and operatives during searches, as well as tax officials, officials from the State Labor Service, and other regulatory bodies during inspections, attempt to engage employees to learn more about the company’s operations, management, and other information that should ideally be restricted for such individuals. Employees must always be prepared for unexpected visits. It is essential to develop instructions for interacting with law enforcement and regulatory bodies within the company. Employees must be familiarized with these instructions under personal signature. A responsible person should be designated within the company, through an order, who will be in charge of communication with inspectors and law enforcement during their visits, as well as liaising with management and lawyers. Responsible employees should understand the basic principles of inspections and investigative actions and know which documents inspectors should have in order to react appropriately to an unwelcome visit until a lawyer or manager arrives. It is also advisable to conduct training or mock searches and inspections to identify weaknesses in the company’s operations. Employees with access to particularly sensitive information should ideally sign confidentiality agreements, specifying confidential information and penalties for its disclosure.
One of the financial instruments that can be used by agricultural businesses is the agricultural promissory note. Legislation defines an agricultural promissory note as a commodity-disposal document that records the debtor’s unconditional obligation, secured by a pledge, to supply agricultural products or pay money under specified conditions. Essentially, an agricultural promissory note is a means of securing an obligation. By issuing an agricultural promissory note, the debtor undertakes to deliver the future harvest (commodity agricultural promissory note) or to pay money under the conditions specified in the promissory note (financial agricultural promissory note), with this obligation being secured by the pledge of the future harvest. The promissory note includes the quantity and quality indicators of the agricultural products and a list of land plots on which they should be grown. Among the mandatory requisites of the agricultural promissory note, the key ones are the subject of the promissory note, which includes: the established obligation to supply a specified quantity and quality of agricultural products and a formula for recalculating the quantity of agricultural products in case of delivery of products of a different quality; or the unconditional obligation to pay money, including the formula for calculating the amount of the debtor’s financial obligation, the quantity, and characteristics of the agricultural products, which form an integral part of such a formula.
Before any operation related to the acquisition of property or property rights (such as the purchase of corporate rights, real estate, or land), a legal examination of the situation surrounding the property or rights (known as due diligence) must be conducted. This involves verifying the legitimacy of the current ownership, checking for any legal disputes surrounding the property, which will allow potential risks to be identified and evaluated before proceeding with the transaction.
To reduce the likelihood of a raider seizure of the enterprise, the following measures can be taken:
- Align corporate documents with current legislation;
- Build a proper corporate governance structure;
- Continuously monitor and analyze information about the company’s assets, including ongoing lawsuits involving the company;
- Organize the system for handling and storing information and documents within the enterprise;
- Secure legal assistance from a professional attorney.
The essential terms of a land lease agreement include:
- The leased object (cadastral number, location, and size of the land plot);
- The term of the lease agreement;
- The lease payment, including its amount, indexation, payment method and conditions, deadlines, the procedure for its payment and revision, and responsibility for non-payment.
In general, only the owner can dispose of any property, including land. Therefore, a tenant does not have the right to pledge the land as collateral for a loan.
The activities of agricultural enterprises are regulated by the Commercial, Civil, Land, and Tax Codes of Ukraine. Special laws include the Ukrainian Laws “On Seeds,” “On Protection of Plant Variety Rights,” “On Livestock Breeding,” “On Agricultural Consulting Activities,” “On Agricultural Cooperation,” “On Wholesale Markets for Agricultural Products,” “On State Support for Agriculture in Ukraine,” and others.
