D.A. FEDYAEV, 

Candidate of Legal Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Business Law, 

Civil and Arbitration Procedure of the Faculty of Law of the Perm State University 

When considering disputes arising from relations complicated by a foreign element, Russian courts need to assess the admissibility of accepting documents of foreign origin as evidence. When Russia jointed the Hague Convention, which abolished the requirement of legalization of foreign official documents of 1961, there was an ambiguous understanding of the requirements for the legalization of foreign documents, the purpose and essence of the apostille procedure by the national courts. In particular, there are excessive demands for apostillization of foreign documents in the absence of a substantiated necessity in the standards. First of all, this is due to the incorrect qualification of foreign commercial documents both by courts and by persons participating in the case. The latter prefer to be reinsured in order to avoid adverse consequences in the form of refusal to accept written evidence from a court of foreign origin. The author raises the question how the wording of the 1961 Hague Convention should qualify documents originating from foreign companies and whether they are required to be apostilled. As a confirmation of the ambiguity of the approaches to registration of such commercial documents, there is a lack of common opinion among specialists, as well as there are some examples of conflicting judicial practice. Taking into account the analysis of the provisions of the 1961 Hague Convention and the norms of Russian law, the author comes to the conclusion that there is no mandatory requirement for apostilling unofficial documents. 

Keywords: arbitration procedure; legalization; apostillization; admissibility of written evidence; foreign documents. 

References 

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Information about the author 

Fedyaev D.A. (Perm, Russia) – Candidate of Legal Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Business Law, Civil and Arbitration Procedure of the Faculty of Law of the Perm State University (614068, Perm, Dzerzhinskogo St., Bldg. 2, Room 80; e-mail: [email protected]). 

Recommended citation 

Fedyaev D.A. K voprosu o neobkhodimosti apostilirovaniya neofitsial’nykh inostrannykh dokumentov v rossijskom arbitrazhnom protsesse [On the Need to Apostille Informal Foreign Documents in Russian Arbitration Procedure]. Вестник гражданского процесса = Herald of Civil Procedure, 2018, no. 2, p. 293–309. (In Russian) DOI: 10.24031/2226-0781-2018-8-2-293-309