Topic: Bribery and corruption

Israeli businessman Beny Steinmetz has accused Brazilian mining company Vale of wilfully ignoring potential corruption risks when it entered into a joint venture with his eponymous mining group a decade ago.

22 May 2020

A US court has upheld a subpoena compelling an engineering company to hand over documents to support a corruption investigation in Ecuador, rejecting arguments it was an attempt to “bypass” procedures in an investment treaty arbitration.

23 April 2020

An English court wants further details before it will hear a challenge by the Pakistani province of Balochistan to a partial ICC award won by an Australian mining venture – as corruption allegations are again invoked in a dispute that has already given rise to a US$5.9 billion ICSID award.

22 April 2020

The Commercial Court in London has allowed Alstom to file expert evidence on French criminal law in its challenge to the enforcement of an ICC award that the courts in Paris have already held would facilitate bribery.

08 April 2020

Shareholders in Brazilian beef packer JBS have filed for arbitration with the company and the billionaire brothers who control it, seeking US$280 million in damages caused by alleged illegal activities spanning a decade.

23 March 2020

The English Court of Appeal has ruled that a UK-based witness can be compelled to give evidence in a New York-seated arbitration over alleged bribes paid to a Central Asian government despite the fact that he is not a party to the arbitration agreement.

20 March 2020

Stéphane Bonifassi and Elena Fedorova of Bonifassi Avocats welcome the French courts’ increasing willingness to reopen arbitral tribunals’ findings on corruption – and argue that arbitrators need to confront such allegations head on, even when parallel criminal proceedings are pending.

04 March 2020

As the international fallout from the Odebrecht corruption scandal continues, Peru has made several reforms to its arbitration law with the aim of increasing transparency for disputes involving state entities – drawing criticism from practitioners in the region who say the measures are ill-conceived.

28 January 2020

An Odebrecht-led consortium has launched an ICC claim against Colombia’s National Infrastructure Agency over a highway concession – months after a domestic arbitration panel concluded the project had been procured through corruption.

21 January 2020

Korean shipbuilder Samsung Heavy Industries has paid US$200 million to satisfy a London arbitration award in favour of an offshore drilling contractor, weeks after settling a related US investigation over bribes paid to former officials at Brazil’s Petrobras.

08 January 2020