Recently, Russian courts have passed down more than five hundred judgments in favor of Russian sanctioned persons against many large international companies and banks for billions of US dollars. These judgments vary in quantum, and a fair amount of them are quite significant (e.g., RusChemAlliance claim against Linde exceeds USD 2 billion). These judgments may represent a considerable threat to the judgment-debtors. Many of such debtors still have assets/affiliates in Russia. But they may pose even bigger threat for international companies if Russian judgment creditors start their attempts to enforce these judgments in other jurisdictions where such companies have significant assets or operations, such as the UAE and GCC region.
You have learnt that you are a defendant in Russian proceedings notwithstanding your respective DR clause. What will you do?
We will discuss the three basic approaches:
- Ignore it
- Just challenge jurisdiction
- Employ a full-scale litigation,
- and the factors to be taken into account to choose the right approach, e.g.:
- Chance to win
- Obligations before the third parties (e.g. insurance companies)
- Availability of investment arbitration vs Russia / need to create the track record of attempts to get access to justice in Russia
- Assets / affiliates in Russia
- Bankruptcy in Russia and its implications for the business outside of Russia
- Parallel proceedings in different jurisdictions and starting arbitration proceedings
- Anti-suit and anti-enforcement injunctions – benefits and perils of the “war of injunctions” and remedies available in the UAE courts
- Enforcement of Russian judgments in the UAE Link to the online broadcast:
