"light and dark" colors in notarial activities

Tuan Dao Thanh- president of Notary Association of Vietnam (Illustration VGP/Lê Sơn)

From 'hundreds of flowers bloom' - opening a notary office...

After more than 6 years of implementing the Law on Notary in 2014, the Ministry of Justice organized 5 training courses for 5,272 people; appointed 3,235 notaries. Up to now, the whole country has established 1,202 notarial practice organizations, of which there are 118 notary offices and 1,084 notary offices which is 10 times more in compared with the time before the socialization of notarization activities

Notary organizations nationwide have notarized more than 24 billion jobs; authenticated signatures on papers and documents, authenticated copies from originals nearly 39 million jobs; the total notarization fee collected is more than 7 thousand billion dong; authentication fee is about 300 million dong; the total notary remuneration received more than 1.1 trillion dong. The amount of tax payment to the state budget is over 1,400 billion VND.

Talking to the Government e-Portal, Mr. Tuan Dao Thanh, Chairman of the Vietnam Association of Notaries, said: The socialization of notary activities is the right policy, creating conditions for the development and activities of notary public. towards professionalization, becoming one of the services, creating legal guarantees about the legitimate rights and interests of individuals and organizations in accordance with the Constitution and the law, preventing risks and disputes.

Notarization activities in the past time have made positive contributions to socio-economic development, ensured legal safety for contracts and transactions, met people's needs, created a favorable and reliablelegal environment for investment, business and trade activities in the context of international economic integration, made an important contribution to the process of administrative reform and judicial reform. This is also a concrete step to implement Resolution 49-NQ/TW of the Politburo in 2005 on the strategy of judicial reform to 2020.

According to experts, besides the achieved results, the process of socializing notarization activities still has a number of difficulties, obstacles and inadequacies regarding the legal basis and practice of notarial activities, which need to be resolved promptly by amending the Law on Notary in 2014 and guiding documents for notarization to develop healthy, professional and effective in the coming time.

to 'hundreds of famous racers' and unfair competition

From the perspective of the head of the professional association, Chairman of the Vietnam Association of Notaries, Mr. Tuan Dao Thanh analyzed: The abolition of the development planning of notary practice organizations has created favorable conditions for notaries to have more practicing  opportunities, participated in providing notary services for individuals and organizations, broken down the ask-for-give mechanism in the process of establishing a notary office...

However, abolishing the notary planning also has a negative impact on notarization activities, the most obvious manifestation of which is the trend of moving public servants from provinces with a small number of contracts and transactions to other provinces and cities. the city has a large number of contracts and transactions; or even in a province or city, notary offices also move their headquarters to districts with a larger number of contracts and transactions. As a result, in some areas where socio-economic conditions have not been developed, people will face difficulties when requesting notarization.

“The concentration of too many notary practice organizations and notaries in some areas will give rise to unfair competition to attract customers, unfair competition will reduce quality, especially is the "legal" quality of this type of public service," said Mr. Thanh.

Head of Tue Tinh Notary Office Le Thi Danh. Photo: VGP/Le Son.

From practical operations, Head of Public Office Tue Tinh (Hanoi), Ms. Le Thi Danh, said that there are many shortcomings in the Law on Notary Publication, causing difficulties for notary practice organizations and "dodging the law". " of the notaries. Localities allow too many public offices to open while transactions do not increase, leading to unfair competition occurring among Notary Offices and among notaries, affecting the quality of notarization services.

In addition, the fact that notary "runs" from one Notary Officeto another to ensure enough 2 notaries for a Notary Office, the collection of service fees according to the agreement leads to a state of "distraction" in notarization activities that distorts, lack of transparency in notarization activities.

The Law on Notarization stipulates that the name of the notary office must include the full name of the notary- the head of the office or the general partner, leading to an awkward situation in practice. When changing the head of the office or moving the headquarters, it is forced to change the name of the Notary Office, affecting the operation of the Notary Office. The name change caused confusion for people and customers to transact. 

As a senior in notary research, Notary Dao Duy An (Hanoi City) admits: The current notarization model has some unreasonable points because notarization is oriented towards rigor and safety. Authentication is aimed at convenience, universality and low cost. Although there is a parallel existence between transaction notarization and transaction authentication, there is no coordination or compensation for each other to reduce risks for people. The notary cannot track and cannot know the transactional asset information through authentication and vice versa. Authentication activities are making the notarial information system built by the notary industry gradually disabled.

“Currently, transaction notarization and civil transaction authentication are almost performing the same task, showing that we have not yet chosen an appropriate notary model and seem to be confused in this regard. Transaction authentication activities are making the notary information system that the notary industry built gradually become disabled," Mr. An stated.

According to Mr. An, there is a fact that it is difficult to distinguish the difference between the notarization activities of notaries and those of the People's Committees of communes and wards. The standards required for notary are very strict, notaries must be responsible for their notarized documents. Meanwhile, for commune/ward judicial officers who carry out authentication activities, the required standards are much lower and they are not responsible for the content of the transaction.

Notary Public Dao Duy An (Hanoi City).

Preventing 'circumvention of the law', 'false' notarization, poor professional skills

Referring to the current "false" notarization situation, Mr. Tuan Dao Thanh said that, besides the achieved results, the socialization of notarization activities in the past time also revealed some disadvantages. such as "false" notary, CCV "dodges" the provisions of the law when changing the place of practice registration, etc.

One of the current burning problems is the "falsified" notary status, which causes people to suffer consequences when many transactions are declared invalid by the court, many CCVs have their practice licenses revoked, and they are criminally prosecuted. the.

To overcome this situation, the Chairman of the Vietnam Association of Notaries said that a number of immediate and long-term solutions must be drastically implemented.

That is, to review relevant provisions of the law to clearly identify objective and subjective causes of the above violations in order to propose remedial measures in accordance with reality; promulgating new or amending and supplementing legal documents in order to "seal" tightly the loopholes in this judicial supplementary activity.

It is neccesary to strengthen inspection and examination and strictly handle violations, Improve the state management capacity, perfect the self-management mechanism in the field of notarization; build an effective mechanism to minimize the negative effects of the market mechanism on notarization activities. According to the provisions of the Investment Law, "notary practicing" is still a conditional business sector.

Le Son
E- Goverment