Ukraine’s a winner in an international investment arbitration dispute under the Energy Charter Treaty
Ukraine has won an international investment arbitration dispute based on the claim of AMTO, a company incorporated in Latvia. It is the first dispute involving Ukraine under the Energy Charter Treaty. In this case, the arbitration proceedings spanned a period of over two years. The dispute was adjudicated pursuant to the Rules and Regulations of the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce by an arbitration tribunal consisting of Mr. Bernardo M. Cremades (Spain) as the Chairman, Mr. Per Runeland (Great Britain) as the arbiter designated by the Claimant and Mr. Christer Soderlund (Sweden) as the arbiter designated by the Respondent.Helen Volska, Managing Partner and Director of EBS, was the independent expert representing the Ukrainian side as to the assessed damages.
The stated claims of AMTO, which, as the arbitration tribunal has ascertained, was controlled by a Russian citizen, pertained to the alleged violations by Ukraine of its obligations under the Energy Charter Treaty due to the alleged unlawful actions of Ukrainian courts in the bankruptcy proceedings against the State Enterprise “Energoatom”, and due to the actions of SE “Energoatom” in respect of AMTO and Elektroyuzhmontazh-10, a significant part of which shares had been purchased by AMTO. The main reason for the dispute between the investor and the State centered on the difficulties, which Elektroyuzhmontazh-10 had in recovering the amount of debt, as adjudged by the Ukrainian courts, from SE “Energoatom” under a number of agreements on technical maintenance by Elektroyuzhmontazh-10 of the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant.
The amount of the stated claims of AMTO had been repeatedly adjusted during the course of the arbitration proceedings, predominantly reduced and as a result ended up to be more than 20 million euros.
On March 26, 2008, the arbitration tribunal rendered a unanimous decision, in which they confirmed that the case was in their jurisdiction, despite a number of the Respondent’s objections and dismissed the Respondent’s counterclaim.
http://www.gp.ua/ru/news/review/itm/37/
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