On July 7, 2025, a law was signed ratifying the Double Taxation Agreement with the UAE, which was entered into as early as February 17, 2025 (the “Agreement”). The national procedures necessary for the Agreement to take effect have been completed.

For the Agreement to take effect on a full-scale basis, the states must also exchange notifications of completion of these national procedures. In this case, the Agreement will take effect on the date of receipt of the last such notification and will apply to all taxes starting from January 1 of the next calendar year. This will almost certainly happen from January 1., 2026.

Dear clients and partners,

You may remember the well-known quote from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

The first half of 2025 clearly shows just how relevant it is for doing business in today’s Russia. Although we must admit that in recent years, the news has been pouring down on us as from a cornucopia.

Companies and entrepreneurs must pay constant attention to rapidly changing practices, new legislative initiatives, and court decisions, and respond promptly to them.

In this overview (Overview July 2025), we have included what we consider to be the most significant changes and events of the first half of 2025 and we also want to share some good news about the life of our law firm with you, because good news is important.

We hope you will enjoy this overview. We also wish you success in implementing your business projects!

Sincerely, Forte Tax & Law Team

Forte Tax & Law launches a new practice: legal support for the Fuel and Energy Complex (FEC). One of its top priorities will be protecting the rights of gas distribution companies (GDCs) in their relations with the Unified Gasification Operator (UGO). Evgenii Kozhevin, an expert in legal support for oil and gas companies, will head this practice. He previously held senior positions in the legal divisions of Gazprom Group and is the author of an analytical series of articles on legal issues related to pre-gasification.

Evgenii Kozhevin’s first initiative as head of the practice was to host a webinar, “First class action against Gazprom in Russia: A Unification of GDCs vs. UGO,” on June 26, 2025. Participants discussed today’s key issues between the UGO and independent gas distribution companies (IGDCs), and ways to resolve their disagreements.

If you would like to receive the webinar materials, please email us.

Pravo.ru publishes the results of an international survey on Russian law firms’ projects abroad

For this survey, Forte Tax & Law submitted 18 projects completed in seven jurisdictions. Three of these projects were among the top 10 most popular jurisdictions by the number of projects in the Pravo.ru survey.

As part of these projects, Forte Tax & Law lawyers handled cases involving foreign trade/customs law and currency regulation, tax law, corporate law/mergers and acquisitions (M&A), regulatory law, and family and inheritance law. Four of these practices ranked among the top 10 most popular practices by the number of projects carried out in foreign jurisdictions.

The Forte Tax & Law team made it to Group 3 of the regional survey according to the overall standings.

If you have any questions about operating in foreign jurisdictions, please direct them to Anton Kabakov.

On April 22, 2025, in St. Petersburg, Delovoy Peterburg newspaper announced the results of the contest “Legal Top: Team Score 2025”.Law firms based in St. Petersburg participate in the competition and submit their cases to be judged by a panel of experts.

The Forte Tax & Law team was awarded with a winner’s diploma in the category “Non-Petersburg Cases of Petersburg Lawyers” and took second place in the category “Legal Practices – Corporate Law”.

Congratulations to the winners and participants of the contest!

To read the full article, click here (in Russian).

On March 19, 2025, the SPIBA Legal Committee held a webinar on “Instruments of saving and investing capital: Personal Funds and Closed-End Investment Funds (CEIFs)”. It was organized and moderated by Julia Talagaeva, Senior Associate at Forte Tax & Law.

The lawyers at Forte Tax & Law who specialize in dispute resolution have successfully represented a Russian IT group of companies in a lawsuit concerning the recovery of remuneration under an agency agreement.

The client entered into an agreement with a financial broker, under which the broker agreed to seek external bank financing for the entire group. The broker’s remuneration was determined as a percentage of the transaction value, which eventually exceeded RUB 1 billion. Potentially, the broker’s remuneration could have amounted to hundreds of millions of rubles.

Pravo-300 has published the results of the individual ranking of lawyers for 2024.

Anton Kabakov and Natalia Vorobyeva are recognized as recommended lawyers!

Congratulations to our colleagues!

On March 11, 2025, the BEPS Academy hosted a round table discussion ‘MNO Belarus-Russia’, at which Anton Kabakov, Partner at Forte Tax & Law, spoke about the approaches that the Russian Federal Tax Service takes to transfer pricing (TP) audits.

The participants discussed key regulatory trends and some practical issues facing companies, including the increased risks and responsibilities associated with related party transactions and the need for companies to self-adjust the tax base to avoid fines and secondary adjustments. The discussion also covered the fact that the Russian Federal Tax Service is shifting its control activities to the stage of a pre-audit analysis.

Anton Kabakov plans to conduct a 4-lecture course on the regulation of transfer pricing (TP) in the near future.

The BEPS Academy is a recognized platform for the exchange of experience and training of specialists in international taxation, and we will be pleased to see you among the audience to discuss TP issues. The course is to take place in April – early May.

If you would like to discuss your case and receive answers to your questions about topical issues, please send an email to Anton Kabakov.