CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY (CSR) PROGRAM

The BUCC presently has the following special CSR projects.

Law Reform

Our law reform/foreign investment protection project to improve Ukrainian legislation is presently focused on (1) curing the problem due to special (and unnecessary) drafting requirements that makes over 60 per cent. of agricultural land leases currently invalid (the BUCC’s proposal to repeal the legislation that caused this problem starting in 2008 was adopted in 2016, so land leases executed since 2016 are valid, but the BUCC’s proposal to prevent land leases executed between 2008 and 2016 from being voided due to this problem still needs to be adopted); (2) curing problems due to certain Ukrainian Supreme Court rulings that a land lease registration can be voided for relatively minor problems (the relevant case law is inconsistent); and (3) correcting the currently proposed draft Limited Liability Law, for example to more appropriately protect minority investors from being coercively removed.

Anti-Corruption and Anti-Corporate Raiding Program

Following up on our previous conferences on the British Bribery Act, the Law of Ukraine “On the Prevention of Corruption”, the US FCPA and other anti-corruption laws and their application in Ukraine, we continue to hold meetings and distribute information on compliance with anti-corruption laws. In 2021, we will be holding webinars focused on changes in anti-corruption law compliance practices. We also continue to make proposals to combat corporate raiding, such as to oblige enforcement officials to provide long advance notice of most enforcement actions and to have prior judicial endorsement for most coercive measures, and to limit or regulate better such actions that may affect the ability of a business to continue its operations.

Education

The BUCC aims to bring foreign LLM Programs to Ukraine. The BUCC is endeavoring to attract UK and certain other foreign LLM programs to law schools at Ukrainian universities, so that more Ukrainian law students have an opportunity to study foreign and international private law relevant to international business transactions. This will help prepare Ukrainian lawyers for situations such as where a foreign law (e.g. English law) governs a cross-border contract, as is so often the case.

Scholarships to the UK. We are developing a scholarship programme to send Ukrainian students to study at UK universities for graduate business and law studies. We are presently seeking sponsors to fund scholarships at Cambridge and Oxford.

Art Promotion / Ukrainian Impressionism

As noted above, the BUCC plans to organize for an exhibition of the paintings of the Ukrainian impressionist Michael Tkachenko to be shown in Kyiv and London, and then in New York and Paris, Chicago and Toronto. Tkachenko in the period 1890-1910 was considered to be a leading impressionist in Paris. He had, for example, major exhibitions at the Grand Palais in Paris, and his paintings received medals at major French exhibitions. However, after Ukraine was overrun by the Bolsheviks in 1921, he was forgotten by western art historians. The BUCC is leading the project to restore Tkachenko’s reputation as a leading Impressionist, which should thereby generally improve the recognition abroad of Ukrainian artists and of Ukraine.

Digitalization Project

We have a project to digitize ancient Ukrainian books held at foreign libraries, to make this part of Ukrainian culture generally accessible digitally to Ukrainians.