On April 14, the Harju County Court fined Eesti Ekspress journalists Sulev Vedler, Tarmo Vahter and AS Ekspress Meedia EUR 1,000 each for disclosing information in an article dated March 25 that the former board of Swedbank had been suspected of money laundering. The prosecutor’s office had not previously shared this information with the public, and the prosecutor’s office was not informed of the article’s publication.

However, the district court overturned the county court’s order in the summer. At the beginning of September, the Supreme Court heard the appeal of the state prosecutor Sigrid Nurme against the judgment, which annulled the fining of Eesti Ekspress journalists. The state prosecutor requests the annulment of the June 14 order of the Tallinn District Court and the enforcement of the April 14 order of the Harju County Court.

Yesterday afternoon, the Supreme Court heard representatives of the State Prosecutor’s Office and newspaper Eesti Ekspress regarding the fining of Eesti Ekspress journalists. LEXTAL’s partner Oliver Nääs and attorney Sander Potisepp represent Eesti Ekspress in the case.

Oliver Nääs has commented that while the prosecutors could not describe in detail how the article harmed the investigation, it shows that for the prosecutor’s office, the case is more about the principle than a substantive problem.

Read more about the case (in Estonian) https://www.err.ee/1608820078/riigikohus-teeb-ajakirjanike-trahvimise-asjas-otsuse-koige-varem-jaanuaris 

LEXTAL partner Kristi Sild together with Keystone Advisers has advised Fruit Xpress OÜ founders in the transaction where international group Bidcorp acquired a majority shareholding in Fruit Xpress. The transaction results in a strategic partnership where the founders and management of the company will remain with the business.

Fruit Xpress is Estonia’s leading fresh distributor to the food service market. Bidcorp is a multinational food service operator listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, South Africa, with a market capitalisation of approximately €6bn.

Read more about it: https://www.aripaev.ee/uudised/2022/12/14/toiduvedaja-fruit-xpress-sai-uue-enamusosanikuhttps://lnkd.in/dRxbQb3c

Although we would like to treat each of our customers, collaborators and good friends with some lovely gifts during the holidays, we can do better in the current situation. Ukraine is still fighting for its freedom, and this year we have decided to direct our Christmas gift finances and more to help Ukraine.

We decided not to offer help passively but to “put our hands on it” ourselves. A couple of LEXTAL colleagues will set off to Ukraine with the rest of the convoy in just a week. The car full of necessary equipment for the medical battalion “Hospitallers” (https://www.hospitallers.life/) should arrive at the destination in 35 hours.

We invite You, dear reader, to contribute to this undertaking. Let’s make a Christmas present together this time. For those in need. For the defenders of freedom. You can send your donation to the account:

ADVOKAADIBÜROO LEXTAL OÜ

EE962200221080317136

SWEDBANK, SWIFT kood/BIC HABAEE2X

Please indicate SLAVA UKRAINE in the explanation

All donations go towards buying, preparing and filling the medical battalion car with the necessary equipment. If the donations are more than the amount of one car and supplies, we will transfer the rest of the money to support the HELP99 initiative.

Here we would like to acknowledge the work of HELP99, an organization created by LIFT99 in Kyiv, which has been organizing aid to Ukraine for months and is also letting us help.

Slava Ukraini!

LEXTAL hosted the Trans-European Law Firms Alliance (TELFA) annual meeting in Tallinn. The conference’s purpose is to bring together young lawyers who would be able to learn something new and (re)establish contact with other professionals working in their field of practice.
In the first half of the day, the main topic of the meeting was introduced, which was cryptocurrency and everything related to it. Margus Poola introduced blockchain technology and gave an overview of its possibilities of use. Henri Ratnik and Rauno Kinkar gave an inside view with the help of real-life examples of how the work of lawyers is connected with a new currency and what questions may arise working with it. Towards the end of the day, Mats Volberg led a panel discussion where representatives from three countries shared cryptocurrency-related legislation and operating rules in their home countries.
The conference hosted almost half a hundred guests from 16 different countries. Future plans for the association and how to promote better services were also discussed. LEXTAL has been a member of TELFA since 2009.

https://www.telfa.law/

Rauno Kinkar, a partner and attorney-at-law at LEXTAL, and Mats Volberg, a lawyer, visited an event organised by the German Comparative Law Society called the 38th Comparative Law Conference. The event was held at the University of Tübingen in Germany.  This year’s theme was digitalisation.

Rauno Kinkar and Mats Volberg together with Martin Ebers, Co-Professor of Information Technology Law at the University of Tartu, gave a presentation on the Estonian legal system and the social debate about self-driving cars. The article was co-authored by LEXTAL’s attorney-at-law Henri Ratnik and our former intern Bridgit Pavlov. The presentation was part of a panel entitled Driving Without a Driver: Autonomous Driving as a Legal Challenge.

Andersen Global extends its European coverage through a Collaboration Agreement with leading full-service law firm LEXTAL Legal, adding three locations in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

LEXTAL Legal provides services in international relations, mergers and acquisitions, corporate and competition, dispute resolution, public procurement law, insurance law, real estate, criminal law, and data protection. The firm, comprised of 21 Partners and more than 75 professionals, provides comprehensive solutions to clients in the Baltic region and globally. LEXTAL Legal is also internationally recognized as a top-performing law firm by The Legal 500 and Chambers Europe.

For thirteen years now, Instar – Employer Branding Agency has carried out yearly research, asking who is the most attractive employer for university students, vocational school students and long-term employees.

The survey is also carried out among law students, and for the sixth year in a row, we were in the TOP3 law firm to be nominated as the most desired place to work in the legal market.

LEXTAL advised Danish company Danfoss ACQ A/S and German company SEMIKRON INTERNATIONAL GmbH in acquiring approval for a merger from the national competition authority. Danfoss Group acquired a majority shareholding in SEMIKRON INTERNATIONAL GmbH.

The Danfoss Group is active in the manufacture and supply of hydraulic systems and hydraulic components, to a lesser extent electro-hydraulics and to an even lesser extent electrical components; the production of integrated, energy-efficient heating and cooling solutions, and the manufacture and distribution of various systems (e.g. low-voltage drives, decentral drives, system modules, enclosed drives, harmonic mitigation filters, motion control and servo drives and medium-voltage drives).

IFLR1000, a research firm of leading financial and business law firms and lawyers, published the results of its annual survey at the end of last month. The 2022 ranking also recognized the LEXTAL team, specifically in the field of financial and corporate law.

LEXTAL has been mentioned in the IFLR1000 rankings before. Last year, Ants Karu, the head of corporate law and transactions, was also given special recognition and was named as highly regarded. Customer feedback speaks for itself:

Our attorney Kaisa-Maria Kubpart and partner and attorney-at-law Kristi Sild wrote a guest chapter for the EQS Group’s Expert Guide on Whistleblowing Laws in the EU. The Guide focuses on implementing the EU Whistleblowing Directive in the EU Member States. While the Directive had to be transposed into national law by 17 December 2021, a deadline that most EU member states failed to meet, EQS Group worked with its expert partner network, including LEXTAL, across the EU to paint the most comprehensive picture possible of the situation across the continent in mid-2022.