July
2009
Avtodor Law developed with the help of Vegas Lex signed by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev
On 17 July 2009, Dmitry Medvedev signed the law on setting up State Company “Russian Automobile Roads” (“Avtodor”) drafted with the help of Vegas Lex experts. The Law is to create a state company in charge of the heavy traffic federal road infrastructure.
Avtodor will be entrusted with the maintenance and development of Russian highways, namely, upkeep and development of a network of automobile roads, increasing their traffic capacity, developing roadside service. The Law entitles the state company to act as a customer of design, construction, reconstruction and maintenance of federal roads at the expense of budget allocations and off-budget sources of financing. According to the Law, the obligations of Avtodor include that of a concession grantor providing concession contracts over the state company’s roads.
The Law is based on the organizational and legal model developed by Vegas Lex experts in 2007 for the upgrading and development of the federal road network. Subsequently, the same teams of contributors together with experts from the RF Transport Ministry, Federal Road Agency and industry professionals were directly involved in drafting the law.
The law-making experience of Vegas Lex is supported by an impressive number of other successful rule-making projects. In particular, in June 2009, the RF Transport Ministry declared Vegas Lex the winner of the tender for proposals on developing a unified Transport Code of Russia. Other initiatives include elaborating regulatory framework for the Olympstroy State Corporation (as required for staging the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi) and development of the organizational and legal concept for modernizing the internal waterways management system (the draft Directive of the RF Government has been tabled before appropriate ministries).
Another, not less significant, law-making initiative by Vegas Lex includes draft Federal Law “On Transit” and legislation on insuring export credits developed at the request of Vnesheconombank. Furthermore, Vegas Lex experts have taken part in developing legislative framework for infrastructure bonds (at the request of the RF Federal Financial Markets Service and RF Finance Ministry), regulatory basis for Life Cycle Contracts and expert comments on amendments to the effective Law “On Concession Agreements”.
Vegas Lex has been awarded a prize “For active participation in law-making” from the Corporate Lawyer Magazine.