scholarly journals Fraud in documentary letters of credit: A comparative study of excising international legal frameworks

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-69
Author(s):  
Hamed Alavi
Keyword(s):  
Research Question ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Trade Finance ◽  
Main Research ◽  
Legal Nature ◽  
Long Time ◽  
American Law ◽  
Letters Of Credit ◽  
Legal Frameworks ◽  
Comparative Manner

Documentary letters of credit are among most popular trade finance instruments used in international business. Despite the fact that main purpose derived from application of documentary letters of credit is to reduce the risk of trade, their mere documentary nature makes them vulnerable to the problem fraud. There is a huge interest among legal scholars and academicians to analyse the nature of fraud in documentary letters of credit due to its important financial effect on smooth process of international trade and also diversified approach of different legal systems to this particular problem. However, majority of conducted studies are limited to most popular legal systems including British and American law. Need for studying the LC fraud in a comprehensive comparative manner among existing international legal frameworks is well noticed for long time. Due to their international nature, LC operation is subjected to substantial number of legal frameworks which most of them are either taking a silent position towards problem of fraud or do not show uniform approach to the it. In this paper, author tries to study di$erent sources of law in documentary letters of credit and their approach to the problem of fraud in a comparative manner. The main research question is what would be the position of fraud rule in applicable legal frameworks to the international LC operation and how do they approach the problem of fraud committed by beneficiary in documentary letters of credit? For this purpose, paper is divided into four main parts: After the introduction, second part will discuss the sources of law applicable to international LC transaction. Third section will analyse the legal nature of fraud in LC transaction. Fourth section will scrutinize the legal approach of different legal frameworks to fraud in documentary letters of credit and finally, the last section will sum up the discussion with concluding remarks.

scholarly journals Remedies to Fraud in Documentary Letters of Credit: A Comparative Perspective / Opravné Opatrenia Pri Podvodoch S Dokumentárnymi Akreditívami: Komparatívna Perspektíva

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Hamed Alavi
Keyword(s):  
International Trade ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Current Paper ◽  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Letters Of Credit ◽  
Legal Frameworks ◽  
American Legal System ◽  
Article 5

Abstract Article 4 of the Unified Customs and Practices of Documentary Letters of Credit establishes the notion of autonomy principle by separating credit from underlying contract between account party and beneficiary. Article 5 by recognizing the autonomy principle confirms that effectuate the payment under credit, banks only deal with documents and not with goods. As a result, while documentary letters of credit are meant to facilitate the process of international trade, their sole dependency on compliance of presented documents to bank by beneficiary to actualize the payment will increase the risk of fraud and forgery in the course of their operation. Interestingly, UCP (currently UCP600) takes a silent status regarding the problem of fraud in international LC operation and leaves the ground open for national laws to provide remedies to affected parties by fraudulent beneficiary. National Laws have different approaches to the problem of fraud in general and fraud in international LC operation in particular which makes the access of affected parties to possible remedies complicated and difficult. Current paper tries to find answer to the questions of (i) what available remedies are provided to affected parties in international LC fraud by different legal systems? (ii) And what are conditions for benefiting from such remedies under different legal systems? In achieving its objective, paper will be divided in two main parts to study remedies provided by intentional legal frameworks as well as the ones offered by national laws. Part one will study the position of UCP and UNCITRAL Convention on Independent Guarantees and Standby Letters of Credit (UNCITRAL Convention) and remedies, which they provide to LC fraud in international trade. Part two in contrary will study available remedies to LC fraud and condition for access them under English and American legal system.

scholarly journals „ … þú ert af guði sendur“. Trúarleg stef í textum sönglaga Sigvalda Kaldalóns

2019 ◽  
pp. 4-24
Author(s):  
Gunnlaugur A. Jónsson
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Folk Religion ◽  
Not Given ◽  
Main Research ◽  
Art And Culture ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Religious Material ◽  
Different Parts

This article, “...You are sent by God”: Religious themes of the lyrics of Sigvaldi Kaldslóns’s songs, deals with the life and work of the physician Sigvaldi Kaldalóns (1881–1946) who has for a long time been regarded as one of the most preeminent composers of Iceland even though being mostly self-educated as a musician. His work as a physician in three different parts of the country is discussed. Everywhere that Kaldalóns worked he was admired as a conscientious and dependable physician. But his presence in the districts where he served also brought a cultural awakening. Art and culture would always flourish in his vicinity. The main research question of this article, however, asks to what extend the lyrics of his songs can reveal his faith and how it is related to his background. In traditional discussion of Kaldalóns’ songs this question is usually not given much attention except in the context of his numerous Christmas carols. In the present article, it is shown that the religious material plays very important and multilateral role. Traditional Christian themes like natural revelation, a continual creation, love of neighbour, worship and holiness, hymns and laments are pointed out and discussed and so is the special combination of Christian themes and the Icelandic folk religion.

scholarly journals Documentary Letters of Credit, Legal Nature and Sources of Law

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (31) ◽  
pp. 106-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hamed Alavi
Keyword(s):  
International Trade ◽  
Global Market ◽  
International Operation ◽  
Transportation Risk ◽  
Legal Questions ◽  
Legal Nature ◽  
Letters Of Credit ◽  
Economic Developments ◽  
Legal Frameworks ◽  
National Economies

AbstractThere is no doubt about risky nature of international trade. Such risk can be conceptualized as country risk, transportation risk, customer risk and etc. Documentary Letters of Credit (LC) are used as a method of payment in international business for many centuries in order to reduce risk of trade specially when parties are located in different countries and do not have precise information from financial standing of each other. In such occasion LC will reduce the risk of trade by shifting payment obligation from buyer as an individual to a payment guarantee of a bank as a legal entity in return for presentation of complying documents with terms of credit by seller. Familiarity with legal nature and different legal frameworks which govern the international operation of documentary letters of credit can facilitate the process of international trade for businessmen and boost national economies. However, lack of knowledge about them can impose huge losses on international traders. Situation will be more complicated when we understand that there are many internationally recognized legal frameworks which can affect the operation of LC and they get frequently updated in order to address technological and economic developments in global market. In this paper, author tries to answer questions regarding (i) what are international legal frameworks governing operation of documentary letters of credit? (ii) which areas of LC operation has been covered by them and (iii) how do they address the legal questions regarding international operation of documentary letters of credit?

scholarly journals Sweden’s Parliamentary Democracy at 100

2019 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 477-502 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johannes Lindvall ◽  
Hanna Bäck ◽  
Carl Dahlström ◽  
Elin Naurin ◽  
Jan Teorell
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
Parliamentary Democracy ◽  
Main Research ◽  
Election Manifestos ◽  
Long Time ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Made In

Abstract This article assesses how Swedish parliamentary democracy works today, almost one hundred years into its history. Our main research question is whether the transformation of the Swedish party system since the 1980s—and especially since 2010, when the populist-radical-right Sweden Democrats entered parliament—has altered the way parliamentary democracy works. We provide new evidence on Sweden’s changing party system, the formation and duration of cabinets, decision-making in parliament and the relationship between what parties say in election campaigns and what they do in government. Our main conclusion is that at least by the election of 2018, surprisingly little had changed. Cabinets have formed quickly, and once formed, they have survived until the next election. The bills governments have sent to parliament have usually passed, often getting the support of one or more opposition parties. Governing parties have managed to implement approximately 80 per cent of the promises they have made in their election manifestos. That said, the relationship between the executive and the legislature was contested in the 2010–2014 and 2014–2018 parliaments, and after the election of 2018, it took a very long time to form a new government. The concluding section discusses what the future might hold.

INITIAL STEP OF SPECIALIZED CORPORA BUILDING: CLEANING PROCEDURES

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vera Yakubson ◽  
Victor Zakharov
Keyword(s):  
Text Processing ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Initial Step ◽  
Main Research ◽  
Academic Texts ◽  
Linguistic Annotation ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Cleaning Procedures ◽  
Unique Source ◽  
Future Work

This paper deals with the specialized corpora building, specifically academic language corpus in the biotechnology field. Being a part of larger research devoted to creation and usage of specialized parallel corpus, this piece aims to analyze the initial step of corpus building. Our main research question was what procedures we need to implement to the texts before using them to develop the corpus. Analysis of previous research showed the significant quantity of papers devoted to corpora creation, including academic specialized corpora. Different sides of the process were analyzed in these researches, including the types of texts used, the principles of crawling, the recommended length of texts etc. As to the text processing for the needs of corpora creation, only the linguistic annotation issues were examined earlier. At the same time, the preliminary cleaning of texts before their usage in corpora may have significant influence on the corpus quality and its utility for the linguistic research. In this paper, we considered three small corpora derived from the same set of academic texts in the biotechnology field: “raw” corpus without any preliminary cleaning and two corpora with different level of cleaning. Using different Sketch Engine tools, we analyzed these corpora from the position of their future users, predominantly as sources for academic wordlists and specialized multi-word units. The conducted research showed very little difference between two cleaned corpora, meaning that only basic cleaning procedures such as removal of reference lists are can be useful in corpora design. At the same time, we found a significant difference between raw and cleaned corpora and argue that this difference can affect the quality of wordlists and multi-word terms extraction, therefore these cleaning procedures are meaningful. The main limitation of the study is that all texts were taken from the unique source, so the conclusions could be affected by this specific journal’s peculiarities. Therefore, the future work should be the verification of results on different text collections

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S APPROACH TO ENERGY SECURITY IN POLAND AND THE BALTIC STATES

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1/2020) ◽  
pp. 33-67
Author(s):  
Olga Stevanovic
Keyword(s):  
Energy Security ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Energy Resources ◽  
Baltic States ◽  
Realist Theory ◽  
Main Research ◽  
Security Challenges ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Baltic

The subject of this paper encompasses US policy towards Poland and the Baltic States regarding energy security during Donald Trump’s presidency. It is discernible that vast domestic energy resources have created an opportunity for the US to project more power to these countries, and the surrounding region. We argue that Trump and his administration’s perceptions have served as an intervening variable in that opportunity assessment, in accordance with the neoclassical realist theory. The main research question addressed in this paper is whether US has used that opportunity to contribute to energy security in countries it has traditionally deemed as allies. Two aspects of US approach to energy security of the designated countries are taken into consideration: liquified natural gas exports and support for the Three Seas Initiative. The way Trump presented his policy and its results in his public statements has also been considered in this paper. The article will proceed as follows. The first subsection of the paper represents a summary of energy security challenges in Poland and the Baltic States. The second subsection is dedicated to the opportunity for the US to project energy power and to Trump’s perceptions relevant for the opportunity assessment. The third subsection deals with American LNG exports to these countries as a possible way for contributing to energy security in Poland and the Baltic States. The last part of the paper addresses the Three Seas Initiative and US approach to this platform.

scholarly journals Effects of exposure to immersive videos and photo slideshows of forest and urban environments

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fariba Mostajeran ◽  
Jessica Krzikawski ◽  
Frank Steinicke ◽  
Simone Kühn
Keyword(s):  
Research Question ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Natural Environments ◽  
Jail Inmates ◽  
Forest Environment ◽  
Main Research ◽  
Head Mounted Display ◽  
Sense Of Presence ◽  
Hospital Patients

AbstractA large number of studies have demonstrated the benefits of natural environments on people’s health and well-being. For people who have limited access to nature (e.g., elderly in nursing homes, hospital patients, or jail inmates), virtual representations may provide an alternative to benefit from the illusion of a natural environment. For this purpose and in most previous studies, conventional photos of nature have been used. Immersive virtual reality (VR) environments, however, can induce a higher sense of presence compared to conventional photos. Whether this higher sense of presence leads to increased positive impacts of virtual nature exposure is the main research question of this study. Therefore, we compared exposure to a forest and an urban virtual environment in terms of their respective impact on mood, stress, physiological reactions, and cognition. The environments were presented via a head-mounted display as (1) conventional photo slideshows or (2) 360$$^{\circ }$$ ∘ videos. The results show that the forest environment had a positive effect on cognition and the urban environment disturbed mood regardless of the mode of presentation. In addition, photos of either urban or forest environment were both more effective in reducing physiological arousal compared to immersive 360$$^{\circ }$$ ∘ videos.

Directionality of cross-linguistic influence: Which referring choices do bilingual Ukrainian–English children make?

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roksolana Mykhaylyk ◽  
Elinor Ytterstad
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
Dual Language ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Direct Object ◽  
Object Language ◽  
Related Factors ◽  
Main Research ◽  
Null Object ◽  
Significant Difference

Aims and research questions: This paper presents a new study addressing the issue of cross-linguistic influence in acquisition of referring expressions. The main research question is how to predict directionality of this influence in a dual language development. Methodology: The method is an elicited production task. We consider the phenomenon of direct object referring choices, i.e. noun, pronoun and null element, in a ‘null-object’–‘overt-object’ language pair (Ukrainian and English). Data and Analysis: Participants of the experiment are 4–6-year-old Ukrainian–English bilinguals (N20) and Ukrainian monolinguals (N21). The data are analyzed in the statistical program R, utilizing the R-library function lme4. The results are presented as odds ratios (ORs) of each direct object type. Findings: Our data reveal that while there is no significant difference in Ukrainian object types in most of the age groups, there is a considerable amount of null object usage in English at the ages of four to five. Originality: The innovative nature of this study lies in: (i) the consideration of a licit object omission at a later stage of language development (from 4 to 6 years of age); (ii) the examination of an under-investigated language combination (i.e. English and Ukrainian); and (iii) the innovative approach to linguistic data analysis (e.g. comparing OR values). Implications: Our findings suggest that the directionality of influence in dual language acquisition depends on the developmental stage, language-specific means of syntax–pragmatics interaction, and extra-linguistic input-related factors. At the early stages of development, the null-object language is likely to influence the overt-object language, especially under conditions of limited exposure to the latter.

Changing family model, social capital and caring: how to reconcile? the case of Lithuania

2013 ◽  
pp. 75-105
Author(s):  
Vida Cesnuityte
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Social Networks ◽  
Nuclear Family ◽  
Extended Family ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Main Research ◽  
Family Practices ◽  
Mother’S Day ◽  
To Receive ◽  
Family Models

The aim of the research presented in the paper is to explore the inter-relations between care processes and personal social networks as social capital in the light of the changing family models. Research of interdependence of care, social capital and family models is based on the idea of family practices suggested by Morgan. The main research question is what family practices of various family models create such social capital that ensure caring for its' members? The research hypothesis is that participation in various activities together with family members and persons beyond nuclear and extended family create dense social networks of caregivers. The analysis is based on data of representative quantitative survey carried out in Lithuania between 2011 November-2012 May within the ESF supported research project "Trajectories of family models and social networks: intergenerational perspective". Research results only partly support this hypothesis: particular family practices create networks of caregivers, but in order to involve particular persons into network of caregivers, different family practices in various family models are needed. Usually, inhabitants of Lithuania primarily expect to receive care from persons who depend to nuclear family created through marriage and extended family arisen from this relation. But persons from whom it is expected to receive care and care received differ in Lithuania. In reality, caregivers usually are children in families with children and parents in families without children. Family practices that create social networks of caregivers, and are common for all family models include annual feasts like Christmas Eve, Christmas, Easter, All Soul's Day, New Year party, Mother's Day. Various family practices differently impacting creation social networks of caregivers for different family models but usually its include joint dinner daily, Sunday lunch together, vacations with family, communication face-toface, by the telephone or Internet, consultations on important decision-making, All Soul's Day feast, Christmas celebration, Mother's Day, Gatherings of relatives, Birthday, Name-day feast, visiting cultural event together.

Stakeholders and opportunities of debt settlement as a values-based banking activity in Hungary

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zsuzsanna Győri ◽  
Borbála Benedek
Keyword(s):  
Research Question ◽  
Good Practice ◽  
Banking System ◽  
Financial Inclusion ◽  
Stressful Situation ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Main Research ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Lessons Learnt

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to discuss the stakeholders of debt settlement programmes in general and some lessons learnt from the most significant debt settlement programmes of recent years in Hungary. The study also presents a planned debt settlement programme in Hungary. The paper explores and details behaviours and motivations of different stakeholders in debt settlement in general and also with reference to a specific case study. As for its main research question, the paper seeks to identify the preconditions of a successful debt settlement programme with specially emphasis on the poor. Design/methodology/approach Data from semi-structured in-depth expert interviews, documents and former research papers were collected for identifying previous Hungarian debt settlement programmes and potential lessons learnt. After a general discussion, based on primary and secondary sources, a case study is presented to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of opportunities and challenges of debt settlement. Findings Six preconditions of successful debt settlement targeting the poor are identified. In the case study, the existence and relevance of these preconditions are tested: the main finding is that they all are important for solving the situations, so a partial solution is not sufficient. In the scope of the case study, more precisely within the planned innovative banking solution, the motivations of the bank and the coordinator NGO are identified. On the part of the bank, motivations for solving social problems (both as far as business and moral issues are concerned) are relevant, while – as for the other party – the situation of the debtor is important to understand so that opportunities of cooperation can be identified. In addition, as other stakeholders also influence the potentials of the programme, their cooperative attitude is also needed. Research limitations/implications Limitations consist in generalisation: the study presents some cases from one single country and finally it focuses only on one specific case in one specific social and economic context in Hungary. Having recognized this risk, the author opted for basing research questions on theory, documented the process in detail, and also used triangulation through applying a multiple data collection (interview, content analysis, literature review) method. Practical implications Besides presenting an academic understanding of the phenomena, the goal of the study is to contextualize and interpret the case, to help the realization of currently frozen initiatives and to promote similar future ones. Social implications Indebtedness is a stressful situation affecting families, smaller communities and broader society as well. The planned cooperation of BAGázs and MagNet tries to help people excluded from the banking system. So that a deeper debt trap can be avoided, the goal of this programme is to purchase, partially discharge and reschedule pre-accumulated debts of carefully selected people who have regular income and are willing to undertake bearable repayment. The idea is very innovative with literally no good practice to follow. The research seeks to clarify the pitfalls and opportunities to help the realization of the project and similar future ones. Originality/value A certain form of values-based banking concerns the financial inclusion of the poor, e.g. debt settlement. Nevertheless, over-indebtedness and the settlement of existing debts as well as the relevance of such issues to the financial inclusion are not emphasized enough in the literature or in practice. Besides presenting an academic understanding of the phenomena, the goal of the study is to contextualize and interpret the case, to help the realization of currently frozen initiatives and to promote similar future ones.

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