On January 22, 2021, the Federal Official Gazette published Resolution No. 55, by means of which the National Mining Agency (“ANM”) amends Resolutions No. 28/2020 and 46/2020, which deal with the suspension of deadlines of certain procedural and material acts under its competence, and the extension of the terms of mineral titles, due to the current COVID-19 pandemic ...
Aron Beezley of Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP outlines the Justice Department's noteworthy procurement fraud recoveries for fiscal year 2020. The Department of Justice (DOJ) recently announced1 that it obtained more than $2.2 billion in False Claims Act (FCA) settlements and judgments in the fiscal year ending September 29, 2020 ...
The information listed below is categorized by topic for your convenience and includes content from the previous week. Bradley is actively monitoring and engaging with relevant federal, state or local entities on issues related to the coronavirus. Please contact one of the authors if you have any questions. Click on a link below to view the full article, alert, blog, webinar recording or interview ...
Northern Ireland Mark Blair Partnerships between the public and private sectors have had a big impact in Northern Ireland, and could potentially achieve more. Shoosmiths collaborated with Insider on a series of virtual roundtables across our regions to discuss how processes could be improved, where funding could come from and what successful collaboration could achieve. To read the report from the Northern Ireland debate, please click below ...
The UK ceased to be part of the EU customs union at 23:00 GMT on 31 December 2020. The UK is now considered by the EU to be a “third country” and as such VAT treatment of UK pleasure craft in EU waters and EU pleasure craft entering UK waters will be affected. This update seeks to outline the post-Brexit position on the payment of VAT for existing pleasure boat owners in the UK, and for those looking to dip their toes in the water this season ...
A new Angolan Public Procurement Law (“PPL”) has been approved recently. Law 41/20 of 23 December revokes Law 9/16 of 16 June and will enter into force on 22 January 2021. The new law will apply to all public procurement procedures beginning after that date and to the performance of subsequent contracts ...
On January 25, 2021, President Biden signed the Ensuring the Future Is Made in All of America by All of America’s Workers (Made in America) Executive Order, which not only directs that federal government purchases and procurement go to American businesses and workers, but also calls out the Jones Act for specifically endorsing the nation’s vessels, ports, and merchant crews ...
In a scenario that has played out across the country for nearly a year now, a group of restaurants based in Ohio were ordered by government authorities to close their on-site dining operations to abate the spread of the coronavirus. However, when the restaurants sought insurance coverage for their loss of business income, their insurer, Zurich American Insurance Company, denied coverage. Last week, the U.S ...
Hong Kong’s Legislative Council’s Panel on Financial Affairs discussed tax concessions for carried interest in its meeting on 4 January 2021, following the publication of a discussion paper by the Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau (FSTB). The FSTB’s paper sets out proposals to offer a zero percent concessionary tax rate for eligible carried interest distributed by eligible private equity funds operating in Hong Kong ...
To boost the economy post-Brexit the government is committed to establishing up to 10 freeports across the UK. In our latest freeport bitesize article, we look at some of the planning implications of which bidders and bid participants should be aware. Back in August 2019 the UK Government announced plans to create ten new freeports that would be free of “unnecessary checks and paperwork, and include customs and tax benefits” ...
On January 1, 2020, Congress overrode President Trump’s veto to pass the National Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 6395 – 116th Congress (2019-20)), which includes the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020 (the “AML Act”). The AML Act revises the Bank Secrecy Act to bolster the government’s power to identify and regulate suspicious banking activity ...
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently issued to Congress its annual bid protest report. As discussed below, this year's report is noteworthy for multiple reasons, including that it shows that protesters received some form of relief from the procuring agency in more than half of the protests filed with the GAO in FY 2020, and the GAO's use of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) increased by 210% in FY 2020 ...
The Biden administration implemented a regulatory rule freeze affecting all federal agency rules that had not gone into effect as of Jan. 20, 2021. At its core, the regulatory rule freeze requires all pending final rules to be delayed at least 60 days in order for the Biden administration to review and opine on the necessity and scope of affected rules. During this delay period, the administration may review, revise, and possibly rescind federal administrative rules ...
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has just released its annual statistical overview[1] of False Claims Act (FCA) and other fraud actions for Fiscal Year 2020 (FY2020)[2], and the numbers tell a mixed story. The total of just over $2.2 billion in settlements and judgments represents a decline of more than one-quarter in recoveries from FY2019,[3] likely reflecting workforce, logistical, and judicial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic ...
On January 20, 2021, Supreme Decree No. 8/2019 of the Ministry of the Environment was published in the Official Gazette, setting forth collection and valorization goals and other associated obligations for tires in order to prevent the generation of such wastes and to promote their reuse, recycling or other types of recovery, in the context of Law 20,920 on Extended Producer Responsibility. Regulated object: tires This decree is applicable to tires introduced into the market ...
The EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement has effectively brought an end to state aid and a new regime of subsidy control has come into effect ...
The majority of people with a mobile phone or access to the internet have received unsolicited emails or calls from telemarketers (cold marketing). While the practice of cold marketing is decades-old, the recent awareness in data protection and privacy has affected this concept in recent times, particularly in relation to access to the data of consumers ...
There were big changes in 2020 in the world of restructuring and insolvency legislation with the introduction of two new restructuring tools: the Moratorium and the Restructuring Plan, as well as the reintroduction of Crown preference. However, due to the government-imposed moratorium while the pandemic runs its course, we have seen hardly any real effects of those reforms ...
On 12 January 2021, David Mathias, Tim Willis, Sam Grange and Matthew Stimson from our Planning & Environmental team hosted a webinar to discuss the main changes introduced to the existing ‘Standard Method’ used for assessing housing need in England and Wales ...
In the state of Ohio, a light-duty job offer is a strategic way to either bring an injured worker back to the workforce or bar temporary total compensation, should the injured worker reject a valid offer. Either way, it can aid employers in eliminating, minimizing, and/or stopping temporary total disability compensation from being paid in a claim ...
The United States’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued an order that will take effect on January 26, 2021, requiring all arriving international airline passengers to provide proof of a negative COVID test taken within three days of the flight’s foreign departure. For those who have had it, the CDC will require proof of recovery ...
The year 2020 will have been difficult for the vast majority of industries, and in particular for the arts, entertainment and recreation industry. The video game industry, however, is growing in leaps and bounds. For example, Nintendo and PlayStation have each set record sales for their games released in 2020, including Animal Crossing:New Horizons and The Last of UsPart II. Over the past few decades, the number of video game players has never stopped increasing ...
The year 2020 was turbulent in many ways: the worldwide pandemic slowed down a number of reforms and caused challenges for various industries. Now it is time to look back and remind ourselves of the changes that took place in the field of employment law over the past year. It is also time to glance at the reforms awaiting us in 2021, a year hopefully brighter than its predecessor ...
On Dec. 22, the Ohio Senate passed the Employment Law Uniformity Act – HB 352. Governor Mike DeWine signed the bill into law on Jan. 12, 2021. The bill is the culmination of 20 years of work by the Ohio Chamber of Commerce to address expansion of Ohio’s anti-discrimination statute resulting from Ohio Supreme Court decisions that interpreted Ohio Revised Code Section 4112 expansively ...
