Hi GIR,

The complex nature of international arbitration and the high stakes can lead to some interesting tactics on display. Recently, some senior names have found themselves in the firing line, as one side tries to wriggle out of an agreement to arbitrate. For instance, the Moscow Commercial Court issued an anti-arbitration injunction against a German oil & gas producer, its external counsel and three arbitrators if they continue with an ECT case. The Russian prosecutor general has argued that all three defendants must be biased as each has close ties to states unfriendly to Russia and they had failed to disclose circumstances that might raise doubts to their impartiality or independence.

In a similar development, leading Spanish arbitrator Juan Fernández-Armesto and a co-panellist recently resigned from an ICC dispute over a billion-dollar sale of a Brazilian pulp producer. Fernández-Armesto said he had been threatened with criminal prosecution by the respondent J&F Investimentos if the tribunal issued further rulings in breach of the court orders. This is just the latest round of troubles in this arbitration, which has also seen the resignation of two other arbitrators and accusations by one side that the other orchestrated a cyber-attack.

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