On January 13, 2017, The Ministry of Justice of Ukraine has installed a new national register of debtors – the Unified Registry of Debtors. This registry has been created pursuant to the Law of Ukraine “On enforcement proceedings” (effective from October 5, 2016) (hereinafter – the “Law”).
The Unified Registry of Debtors (hereinafter – “the Registry”) is a publicly available, free of charge and up-to-date database of individuals and legal entities who have outstanding monetary liabilities according to ongoing enforcement proceedings.
Under the Law, an enforcer is obliged to make a record on a debtor to the Registry right after the enforcement proceeding had been initiated. The Registry will reflect the following information:
a name of the company and its state registration code – for a legal entity, or a full name, date of birth and tax payer’s code of an individual;
an authority and a person who have initiated the enforcement proceeding with their contacts;
a type of outstanding liability (alimony, debt, penalty, etc);
a unique number of the enforcement proceeding.
However, the law defines a certain types of enforcement proceedings that will not be reflected in the Registry. In particular, the following information will not available to the public:
proceedings where the debtor is a state or local authority;
proceedings where the debtor had failed to fulfill non-property obligations;
proceedings where the debtor had overdue of periodic payment for less than 3 months.
The practical use of the new Registry is that any person can check its counterparty before entering into any agreement. One can search a legal entity by its name and/or state registration number, and use full name, date of birth or tax payer’s ID code to check an individual.
The other useful novelty is that registration in the Registry implies restriction on right of disposal of property which is subject to registration (effectively real property). The new Law obliges all the state registration officers and notaries to notify the respective enforcement officer if any debtor from the new Registry tries to alienate his real estate. Upon receiving such notification, the enforcement officer will be able to put a seizure on that real property.
If the enforcement proceeding is closed, fulfilled or suspended, the record on debtor would be removed from the Registry.
The Unified Registry of Debtors is available at: http://erb.nais.gov.ua/#/search-debtors