Monday 29 September 2014

Syria – Legalisation of Powers of Attorney

News today from good friends AGIP about Powers of Attorney in Syria. This compounds the difficulties faced by rights holders in having Powers of Attorney legalised for use in Syria (securing rights in Syria reported here and here). The news from AGIP reads:

DAMASCUS – The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriate at the Syrian Arab Republic set new procedures for the legalization of Power of Attorney. According to the new procedures, the Ministry will not entertain the Power of Attorney which signing date exceeded three months.
The new procedures come in compliance with the Ministry’s regulations to obtain a clearing approval from the Boycott Office on the Power of Attorney before proceeding with the procedures, without yet coordinating such a request with the Boycott Office.
Accordingly, with the new imposed request, the Ministry is reluctant to receive new Powers of Attorney until they receive further input from the Boycott Office or other concerned authority.
We would like to point out that the Powers of Attorney which we recently received from our clients with their applications are suspended until the Ministry issues clear instructions. The clients may file their applications without the Power of Attorney in order to obtain an early filing date. However in case the local procedures are delayed beyond 6 months (which is the permissible period to submit the missing documents supporting the application) or the applicant name is not approved by the authorities; the applications will go abandoned.
Therefore, our clients, at their discretions, can either file their applications in Syria and later submit the Power of Attorney after its local super-legalization - at the hope that the POA procedures are completed within the ensuing (6) months, or delay the filing until the local POA procedures are successfully completed.
It is worth mentioning that the aforesaid piece of news does not cover those companies, for which we already hold legalized Powers of Attorney on their behalf as we can smoothly reproduce true copies of the previous POAs on file locally.
As for the current POAs, which we have just received from our clients and the Foreign Ministry is still reluctant to entertain: in case the 3-month POA validity from the signing dates lapses, we will need fresh legalized POAs.
Our Syria office is following up the matter with concerned authorities, and will keep our clients posted about any development.
This part of the Empty Quarter hopes for better news soon.







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