In late October a client from a Gulf country explained that POAs in their country are drafted only in Arabic, are not issued in a bilingual format, and can be granted only to natural persons, not to companies or legal entities.
Our answer: no objection. The POA can be drafted in Arabic only and issued in the names of the lawyers listed in the POA form, acting in their professional capacity. To make the drafting possible, we sent copies of those lawyers' passports at the client's request.
What did not change: the POA must still be legalised up to the Iraqi Embassy to be valid before the competent Iraqi authorities. Flexibility on language and grantee is not flexibility on legalisation.
If your local notaries cannot issue a standard bilingual company POA:
- Tell your Iraqi agent before drafting, not after
- Ask whether an Arabic-only text naming individual lawyers will work
- Request the lawyers' passport copies for the drafting
- Keep the full legalisation chain, ending at the Iraqi Embassy
Preparing a POA for trademark registration in Iraq under local restrictions? Tell us what your notary can and cannot issue, and we will suggest a workable format.