Accreditation of legal bodies’ branches and representative offices

Obtaining accreditation for foreign-owned legal bodies (FLB) is necessary for the company’s functioning on the territory of the Russian Federation.

First of all representative offices of FLB should determine the purpose of firm’s opening. The purposes can be the following: information exchange broadening (scientific-and-technological, economic or commercial), providing of various deals’ keeping, trade links development, export enlarging assistance and others. A complete list of foreign-owned firms’ possible activities on the territory of RF as well as other aspects of legal regulation are described it the Council of Ministers of USSR Decree from November 30, 1989 №1074. Taking into consideration a broad understanding of the term “foreign-owned firm”, mentioned in the Decree, it should be clarified particularly, that separately-run units’ accreditation is possible only for legal bodies. This comment is required as a number of organisations not possessing the legal body status in accordance with their state’s laws are referred to as “foreign-owned firms” by a part of overseas investors.

Business managers or persons in authority have to go through some stages for obtaining relevant documents which allow company’s legal activities.

Accreditation order of legal body’s representative office/branch

• Preparing and coordinating the documents’ drafts (letter of trust for the chief representative, setting-up act, references);           
• Receiving and translating foreign-owned company’s documents. preparing required quantity of notarized copies for the whole process;
• Preparing and signing of accreditation documents;
• Filing of documents for the accrediting body;
• Obtaining a permission for representative office/branch’s opening and Certificate of Entry in the Unified State Register of Accredited Representative offices;
• Manufacturing of Representative office’s seal;
• Tax registration;
• Obtaining of Federal Public Statistics Service’s codes;
• Registration in the Pension Fund and Social Insurance Fund;
• Opening of bank accounts;
• Filing messages of accounts’ opening for the taxation body and non-budgetary funds.

Going through each of stages is connected with certain difficulties and capable of arising a great deal of problems for persons, never encountering before the Russian accreditation obtaining system.  As a consequence, foreign investors lose a lot of time as they have to go through the same authorities over and over again because of documents’ shortage, incorrect papers’ fulfilling and other problems. You can avoid such troubles by seeking professional legal advice and counselling.

LAC Pactum provides a complete package of services for obtaining accreditation of foreign companies’ representative offices and branches. Our duties include firm’s in-house documentation development, which allow starting activity on the territory of Russia as well as all registration actions conducting.

Details are available through seminar proceedings "Accreditation and Migration"