On December 4, 2018, the Law of the Republic of Azerbaijan "On State Registration and State Registry of Legal Entities" (hereinafter: the Law) was amended. 

According to the amendments, the application for the state registration of legal entity  must bear the signature of the legal entity’s legal representative (Director). Thus, when notarizing the application for state registration of the legal entity, in addition to the shareholders, the legal representative shall  participate and sign the application before the notary personally or via proxy.

This rule also applies to electronic application for the state registration of the legal entoty, as well. If an application for state registration is electronically submitted, that application should be confirmed by an electronic signature of both the shareholders and the legal representative. The approved amendments would be helpful in preventing the abuses such as non-consensual appointment as legal representative (director) which is used in practice.

Another amendment to the Law deals with the legal address of public legal entities and commercial legal entities. Before the amendments, a notarized consent letter from the property owner had to be  attached to the application for state registration of the legal entity. According to the amendments, it would be sufficient to prove the legal address on the application for state registration of public legal entities and commercial legal entities without the need of notarized approval letter. . However, this does not imply that the consent of the property owner on the use of legal address is not required anymore by law. Legislator simply removed the need for the notarized evidence of consent for the use of legal address from the required documents while registration. It should be noted that for state registration of the non-commercial organizations, notarized document about legal address is still required.