Commercial Books and Their Evidentiary Role under Syrian Law

Commercial Books and Their Evidentiary Role under Syrian Law

In commerce, trust alone is not enough. Every sale, payment, debt or settlement may later become disputed. Documents and records then become the language through which facts are established before the courts.

Commercial books are therefore more than accounting tools for calculating profits and losses. In a dispute, they can become important evidence of rights and obligations.

Articles 16 to 22 of Syrian Commercial Law No. 33 of 2007 regulate commercial books, including their types, preparation, retention and production before the courts.

What are commercial books?

Commercial books are the records a trader regularly keeps of transactions concerning their business and commercial activity.

In principle, the law requires two main books:

• The journal, recording business transactions according to the system prescribed by law.
• The inventory book, containing the annual inventory of assets and liabilities, together with the balance sheet and profit-and-loss account.

A trader must also retain and organise incoming correspondence and copies of outgoing correspondence.

People conducting small-scale trade or a simple craft with modest overheads, relying primarily on their personal labour for a limited income, are exempt from commercial-book obligations where the conditions in Article 10 are met.

When are books properly maintained?

A book's legal value cannot be separated from the way it is kept.

Article 17 requires commercial books to be maintained chronologically, without blanks, gaps, transfers to the margin, erasures or insertions between lines. The law also requires numbering, endorsement and signature by the competent judicial authority.

These requirements aim to prevent entries from being changed or added later in a way that distorts the record.

From our perspective, the question is not simply whether a commercial book exists. It is whether the book has been kept in a manner that allows the court to trust that its entries reflect transactions as they actually occurred. The more regularly a book is maintained, the greater its potential value in a dispute.

How are commercial books used as evidence?

Commercial books have a distinctive evidentiary role because they can operate in two directions.

First, entries may constitute evidence against the trader who made them: a person's own business records may help establish an obligation or fact against that person.

Second, a trader may rely on their books to establish a right in their favour in certain commercial transactions, particularly where the dispute is between two traders and the books are regularly maintained. Syrian evidence rules recognise regularly maintained mandatory commercial books as evidence for their owner in transactions relating to their business where the dispute is with another trader.

The existence of an entry must nevertheless be distinguished from its evidentiary weight. A book is not conclusive proof that resolves a dispute merely upon production. The court assesses it alongside contracts, invoices, receipts, correspondence and other available evidence.

May a judge require production of the books?

Yes. Complete commercial books are, in principle, delivered to the court only in specified cases, such as inheritance, division of jointly owned property, partnership matters, preventive composition and bankruptcy.

In other disputes, books may be presented or their production requested to extract the entries relevant to the dispute. The judge may also order production for that purpose on the court's own initiative.

This distinction protects both the court's need to establish the facts and the trader's interest in avoiding disclosure of all business secrets where the dispute concerns only a particular transaction.

BaghdadiLaw's perspective: why orderly books may determine a dispute

Consider a dispute between two traders in which one claims to have paid an amount and the other denies receiving it.

The court will generally look beyond each party's account. It will examine invoices, transfers, receipts and correspondence, and may also consider entries in commercial books.

Where entries are regular and consistent with the other documents, they may form a strong evidentiary sequence:

A commercial transaction; a supporting document; a regular entry in the books; and consistency with the remaining evidence.

Alterations, gaps, contradictions or irregular entries may substantially reduce a book's evidentiary weight. Its strength derives not merely from being a book, but from regularity, continuity and consistency with other documents.

What about electronic accounting?

Syrian commercial legislation also accommodates technological developments. It permits traders to keep accounts electronically in accordance with implementing instructions issued by the Ministry of Economy and Trade. In specified cases, it also allows an electronic copy to be retained for the statutory retention period with the evidentiary value of the original.

Digitisation does not remove the need for discipline. Accounting software does not protect its user if the data is incomplete, cannot be audited, or lacks supporting original documents.

The practical lesson

Commercial books under Syrian law are not merely an organisational duty; they form part of a trader's own protection.

A trader who accurately records transactions, preserves invoices and correspondence, and maintains books according to law gains both a clearer understanding of their financial position and a stronger ability to establish rights in a dispute.

The practical principle is simple:

A trader who documents transactions today reduces the scope for dispute tomorrow.

Memories differ and accounts conflict. A regular entry supported by a document may be the difference between a claim that is difficult to prove and a right that can be defended before a court.

This is an opinion article and does not constitute legal advice.