Insight type: Legal Alert

The Finance Bill, 2022 was published and gazetted on 8 April 2022. The Bill proposes to make amendments to a raft of tax-related laws in Kenya, including the Income Tax Act (Chapter 470, Laws of Kenya), the Value Added Tax Act, 2013, the Tax Procedures Act, 2015, the Miscellaneous Fees and Levies Act, 2016 and the Excise Duty Act, 2015, among others. Additionally, the Bill proposes changes to other statutes such as the Capital Markets Act, the Insurance Act, the Unclaimed Financial Assets Act, the Statutory Instruments Act and the Evidence Act.

In March 2022, legislation was rushed through the UK Parliament to introduce the Register of Overseas Entities owning UK land (ROE). The new measures are intended to increase transparency and the effect is wide ranging.

This legal alert addresses the issue of whether or not it is possible for an employer to mandate its employees to undergo mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations and whether such an action can be legally supported.

On 29 October 2021, Zambia’s Honourable Minister of Finance and National Planning, Dr Situmbeko Musokotwane, MP presented Zambia’s national budget for the 2022 fiscal year to the National Assembly. In doing so, the Minister proposed to widen the tax base by introducing property transfer tax (PTT) on the transfer of “mineral processing licenses” (i.e. a license which enables the holder to process minerals and cut, polish and manufacture jewellery) or “an interest in a mineral processing license”.

When shareholder disputes arise, minority shareholders sometimes face the risk of dilution of shareholding or removal from board representation by hostile majority shareholders. In such cases, absent a shareholder agreement prescribing the manner in which disputes are resolved, minority shareholders are at the mercy of the provisions of the company’s articles of association and the protections provided in the law.

The Dubai International Arbitration Centre (DIAC) has revised its 2007 arbitration rules and announced the publication of the much-anticipated new DIAC Arbitration Rules 2022 (2022 Rules). The new 2022 Rules, which came into force on 21 March 2022, are the result of Decree No. 34 of 2021  (Decree No. 34) which came into effect on 20 September 2021. The 2022 Rules will govern all new requests for arbitration and exceptional procedures submitted after 21 March 2022.

A recent Court of Appeal decision in the UK highlights the increasing obligations on banks to not only verify who is giving them instructions in respect to a particular account, but also review the nature of those instructions. Banks may not be able to defend their actions by simply saying they acted on the authority of the signatories of the account.

Following the enactment of the Central Bank of Kenya (Amendment) Act, 2021 (the Act) on 23 December 2021, the mandate of the Central Bank of Kenya (the CBK) now extends to licensing and oversight of Digital Credit Providers in Kenya (DCPs) (see our earlier alert on the enactment here).

This legal alert highlights the law regulating the use of audio-visual technology in proceedings before the High Court. The emphasis on the use of audio-visual technology has been a response to the need for the continued conduct of court proceedings during the prevalence of COVID-19. It is important to note that the giving of evidence via audio-visual technology has been guaranteed by law from as far back as 2012 when Order XXXII Rule 2 (8) of the High Court (Amendment) Rules, 2012 (“Rule 2(8)”) was enacted.

Kenya has now begun the negotiation process on the interim Economic Partnership Agreement (the EPA) with the European Union (the EU) — a significant step in a journey that has taken more than a decade. [i] Initially, the EPA was to be entered into by the EU and the member states of the East African Community (the EAC) – Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda – after twelve (12) years of negotiations that were concluded in October 2014.[ii]