L'arbitrage peine à s'imposer dans le règlement des différends commerciaux

Les PME sont encore très frileuses en raison notamment du coût qu'elles jugent élevé. Les grandes entreprises marocaines adoptent systématiquement l'arbitrage dans leurs contrats internationaux. De plus en plus de banques y ont recours pour contourner la lenteur de la justice.

 
Les professionnels ne cachent pas leur désillusion. Pour des entreprises qui côtoient une machine juridique dont les carences et les tracasseries sont multiples, l’arbitrage peut présenter une alternative plus intéressante pour résoudre les différends d’ordre commercial. Cependant, cette formule faisant partie des ADR «Alternative Dispute Resolution» en est toujours à ses balbutiements. «Nul ne peut s’aventurer à avancer un chiffre exact des litiges à issue arbitrale, tout simplement parce que l’ar

bitrage est très discret par définition», constate Mohamed El Mernissi, président de la Cour d’arbitrage marocaine. En effet, les parties ont toute la latitude de choisir l’arbitre, qui n’est pas forcément un juge en exercice, et qui n’est pas tenu non plus de faire partie d’une profession spécifique. D’où la difficulté, voire l’impossibilité de recenser toutes les affaires déférées devant des arbitres. Néanmoins, la tendance globale qui se dessine depuis l’adoption de la loi 08-05 atteste clairement que nous sommes loin de l’engouement auquel on aurait pu s’attendre.

Les raisons sont multiples. Déjà, les PME peinent à se défaire des idées reçues. Pour ces entreprises, l’arbitrage coûte très cher : les honoraires de l’arbitre, qui sont forfaitaires, sont généralement jugés excessives par rapport à la prestation. «On ne tient pas compte des budgets des parties et du montant du litige, la rémunération des arbitres est supportée à égalité par les belligérants (one shot) au début de la procédure, celui qui a obtenu gain de cause étant remboursé par la partie adverse à l’issue du circuit», souligne M. El Mernissi.

De plus, une majorité de PME préfère toujours recourir aux tribunaux pour bénéficier du délai prolongé du circuit ce qui leur laisse le temps pour préparer leurs preuves, et même pour atermoyer lorsqu’elles sont persuadées d’une sentence défavorable. Aussi, ces PME font-elles appel généralement aux petits cabinets de conseil qui ne leur présentent pas l’arbitrage tel qu’il est. Tandis que plusieurs juges et avocats, pour des raisons de corporatisme, ne voient pas d’un bon œil l’immixtion d’une personne étrangère à la Justice dans un différend commercial.

L’arbitrage social non plus n’attire pas les entreprises

L’arbitrage présente pourtant des avantages indéniables. Par exemple, en Amérique du Nord, il règle environ 70% des litiges. Au Maroc, «le délai moyen que prend la résolution des litiges devant des arbitres ne dépasse pas souvent six mois, et atteint rarement un an. Il existe même des cas dénoués en 4 jours», explique M. El Mernissi.

Outre les avantages, l’arbitrage est devenu incontournable dans les relations commerciales internationales. En effet, pour la majorité des établissements qui ont des contrats à l’étranger, se pose le problème du choix du droit à appliquer et de la juridiction compétente en cas de litige. Par conséquent, leurs contrats prévoient systématiquement des clauses arbitrales. On peut citer notamment des entreprises publiques comme l’Office national de l’électricité (ONE) et Autoroutes du Maroc qui ont adopté ce procédé de par la nature de leurs marchés.

Dans le même ordre d’idées, les banques de la place s’y mettent de plus en plus. «Confrontés à la montée des impayés, les établissements financiers se rabattent sur l’arbitrage avec l’espoir de ne pas voir des centaines de dossiers s’éterniser dans les casiers des tribunaux», relève un conseiller juridique d’une banque. Ces institutions ont saisi la portée des avantages de la formule, surtout son côté discret, diligent, et moins coûteux vu qu’elle leur épargne les multiples cas d’appel avec leur lots d’honoraires.

«Le cadre législatif n’est pas à incriminer. Il est inspiré des normes internationales en la matière et il est plus que favorable au développement de l’arbitrage sous nos cieux. Nous assistons surtout à une résistance au changement de la part des entreprises qui continuent à préférer des schémas rétrogrades en exploitant les carences de l’appareil juridique et sa lenteur pour protéger leur intérêt en dépit des charges financières que cela leur induit», déplore Mohamed El Mernissi.

Il en est de même pour l’arbitrage social qui, lui aussi, bien qu’étant réglementé par le code du travail en tant que mécanisme évitant la montée des conflits sociaux, n’attire pas les entreprises. Ces dernières lui préfèrent toujours la procédure judiciaire normale ou le règlement à l’amiable. En effet, le code du travail ne se prononce pas sur la partie à laquelle incombe la rémunération de l’arbitre, et déclare la sentence arbitrale exécutoire et sans voie de recours, ce qui dissuade l’entreprise.

Rappelons que l’arbitrage exclut de son périmètre d’intervention le droit de la famille et le droit fiscal, en raison de la sensibilité du premier et de la souveraineté du second.

: L'arbitrage en quelques mots

- Délai de résolution : procédure limitée dans le temps, 6 mois en règle générale.

- Coût de la procédure : frais administratifs et honoraires des arbitres maitrisables et connus à l’avance à travers les barèmes de la profession. Ils sont payés à parts égales par les deux parties au début de la procédure, sachant que le perdant doit rembourser au gagnant le coût de la procédure à la fin.

- Confidentialité : les séances ne sont pas publiques et les décisions ne font pas l’objet de publicité, ce qui garantit la confidentialité totale des débats et des sentences.

- Force probante de la sentence : sentence définitive et obligatoire rendue par les arbitres.

- Portée territoriale : reconnaissance internationale des sentences dans les 140 pays ayant ratifié la Convention des Nations Unies de 1958. La sentence revêt le caractère exécutoire dans ces pays.

La Vie éco

The Italian Constitutional Court pronounces the illegitimacy of the compulsory mediation in civil and commercial disputes

• CMS Adonnino Ascoli & Cavasola Scamoni
• Laura Opilio , Paola Ghezzi and Valerio Biondi
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By its decision issued on 24 October 2012, the Italian Constitutional Court has declared the illegitimacy of the provision of the Legislative Decree n. 28 dated 4 March 2010 implementing the “Compulsory Mediation” procedure for the resolution of certain disputes (article 5.1 of the “Decree”).
BACKGROUND
The Decree - implementing in Italy the European Mediation Directive (2008/52/EC) published on 21 May 2008, as part of the European initiative to promote and regulate the development of Mediation throughout the EU (“the establishment of basic principles in this area is an essential step towards enabling the appropriate development and operation of extrajudicial procedures for the settlement of disputes in civil and commercial matters so as to simplify and improve access to justice”) – was aimed at reducing the overload on the Italian legal system (which, according to a recent World Bank Report, ranks 157th for enforcing contracts) by the introduction of a two folds Mediation procedure:
• a Non-Compulsory procedure which applies to any civil and commercial litigation (article 2.1, introduced on 20 March 2010);
• a Compulsory procedure which applies to any possible litigation in relation to insurance, banking and financial agreements, joint ownership, property rights, division of assets, hereditary and family law, leases in general, gratuitous loans, leases of going concern, medical liability or defamation/libel (article 5.1, effective since 20 March 2011 and, only for motor/vehicles insurances and condominium disputes, since March 2012). More precisely:
1. disputes subject to the Compulsory Mediation attempt can have access to judicial Courts only if the Mediation has failed;
2. should a party do not attend the Compulsory Mediation hearing, it can be sanctioned by the Court (administrative sanction).
Also, in both Non-Compulsory and Compulsory Mediation procedures:

1.  the Court can deduce from the party’s unjustified absence to the Mediation hearing, an argument of evidence against the same party;
2. should the Court’s judicial decision correspond to the Mediator’s proposal (if any), the party having refused such proposal, although successful in the judicial claim, shall be condemned to the counterparties’ legal costs refund.

THE CONSTITUTIONAL COURT’S DECISION

The Constitutional Court’s statement of illegitimacy of the Compulsory Mediation procedure is grounded (although the decision rationale has not yet been published) on the lack of legislative power of the Italian Government having introduced, through article 5.1 of the Decree, the Compulsory nature of the Mediation for the aforementioned specific disputes (i.e. going beyond the relevant provisions of the Delegation Law n. 69/2009 - which did not explicitly refer to the Compulsory Mediation procedure).

According to some of the Syndicates which have challenged the Compulsory Mediation provision and procedure, the compulsory nature of the mediation would have resulted into an invalid and unjust limitation to the parties’ right and freedom to access the Justice for the resolution of any kind of litigation (including those concerned by the Compulsory Mediation).

A clear and consistent analysis of the Constitutional Court decision and of its effects cannot depart from the analysis of its rationale (not published yet), thus will be possible only after its filing.

CONSEQUENCES – FOCUS ON INSURANCE LITIGATION

The Compulsory Mediation provision and procedure, despite illegitimate, will formally remain applicable until the Constitutional Court’s decision under discussion is published on the Official Gazette (not yet).

After such publication, parties of a dispute of any kind, including insurance disputes, are no longer subject to the preliminary mediation attempt and can therefore access the Justice immediately regardless of the nature of their dispute.

Although the decision at issue eliminates the Compulsory Mediation procedure, since it is to be considered illegitimate, parties of a dispute of any nature, aiming at avoiding the overload of the legal system, are still entitled to (voluntarily) apply for the Non-Compulsory Mediation procedure.

In this case, a party’s absence at the Non-Compulsory Mediation hearing, without a justification, will result in a behavior which can be interpreted by the Court, in the following judicial claim (if any), as an evidence against the same party (however, no more administrative sanctions are applicable to such party).

Insurance litigation triggered after the publication on the Official Gazette of the Constitutional Court’s decision, then, does not seem completely free from the burdens imposed by the Non-Compulsory Mediation rules, should the insured call for a Mediation attempt.

In this case, in fact, the Insurer shall evaluate the insured’s claim and requests before the mediation hearing, in order to decide whether to attend it or not (and, if not, also to provide the competent mediation Organism with a justified reason).

CONCLUSIONS

Some do believe that by this decision an important chance has been lost for the Italian legal system to be improved, others do not alleging that thanks to such decision access to the Justice has been granted without discrimination.

After the Constitutional Court’s decision announcement, the Italian Ministry of Justice has confirmed that, for the Government, Mediation still be, in the Italian legal system, absolutely worth and that, therefore, discussions on the possible incentives to be implemented are ongoing.

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Fonte: http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=4db3f5a5-1995-42ae-a590-eff1c0a01f54

European investment-fund backs billion-euro claim against Slovakia

ZURICH — We are pleased to announce that the EuroGas Group (EuroGas) has secured financing to pursue its previously announced legal action against the Slovak Republic for damages and interest relating to the illegal 2005 expropriation of the Gemerska Poloma talc mine, located in Roznava, which belonged to EuroGas 'affiliate, Rozmin s.r.o.

The damage claim that will be presented before the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) against the Slovak Republic is being prepared and EuroGas has notified the Slovak Republic of the pending action. In order to pursue this legal remedy, EuroGas had to obtain a financing in order to pursue its claim, a process that is expected to involve significant legal expense. On September 26, 2012 EuroGas entered into a financing agreement with a Luxembourg based investment fund (the Fund) that specializes in financing arbitration proceedings.

After having examined the damage claim proposed by EuroGas and evaluating its prospects for a successful outcome, the Fund agreed to finance all legal costs related to the proceeding, confident in the merit of the claim. The damage claim against the Slovak Republic is based principally on the definitive ruling of the Slovak Supreme Court, issued on May based 18, 2011, which stated that the repeal of the license was illegal and fraught with numerous irregularities committed by the Mining Administration of the Slovak Republic.

However, this decision has not been enforced, which has caused EuroGas to incur in excess of EUR 1,000,000,000 in damages. The Fund's financial backing of EuroGas will insure that it will have the means to vigorously pursue its damage claim before the international arbitration institution ICSID.

Read more here: http://www.heraldonline.com/2012/11/06/4391255/eurogas-ag-european-investment.html#storylink=cpy

P.R.I.M.E. Finance – benefits and challenges

The stated aim of the Panel of Recognised International Market Experts in Finance (abbreviated P.R.I.M.E. Finance) is to facilitate dispute settlement, reduce legal uncertainty and foster stability in the global financial markets. 

To achieve this, P.R.I.M.E. Finance seeks to be more efficient, cheaper, and predictable than both domestic courts and established arbitration centres. It has notably assembled a panel of experienced arbitrators that are familiar with the requirements and specifics of the industry. It has also based its arbitration rules on the 2010 arbitration rules of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (the UNCITRAL Rules), and established its seat in The Hague.

We set out below the benefits and challenges of using P.R.I.M.E. Finance's dispute resolution services. It also offers legal opinions and advisory services, as well as judicial training, and a library and specific database of relevant case law and papers. 

The benefits of using P.R.I.M.E finance

The benefits of using P.R.I.M.E. Finance as an arbitration institution can be summarised as follows:

A concentrated body of specialists.  

The panel consists of over 80 specialists in market practice, relevant law, arbitration and mediation, drawn from financial institutions, leading law firms, the judiciary, regulatory agencies and academia. It includes retired and sitting judges, central bankers, regulators, representatives from private practice and derivative market participants (both dealer and buy side). 

Greater certainty about who will arbitrate the dispute.  

This is because the tribunal will be drawn from its panel of specialists. 

P.R.I.M.E. Finance Arbitration Rules are based on the 2010 UNCITRAL Rules.  

The UNCITRAL Rules are well-established – having been first introduced in 1976 – and widely used. Many users will, therefore, be already be familiar with most of the rules used by P.R.I.M.E. Finance. 

Potential for fast resolution to disputes.  

There are some deviations from the UNCITRAL Rules, which primarily relate to expedited and emergency proceedings. Under Article 2(a) of the P.R.I.M.E. Finance Arbitration Rules, parties may agree to shorten proceedings if the arbitral tribunal approves. Article 26(a) and Annex C provide for emergency arbitral proceedings (i.e. provisional measures) prior to the constitution of the arbitral tribunal. 

Limited scope for appealing the award.  

This characteristic, however, is not unique to arbitrations brought under the rules of P.R.I.M.E. Finance. 

Awards benefit from enforcement under the New York Convention.  

The Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards 1958 obliges all 147 contracting States to recognise arbitral awards made in the territory of another contracting State as binding and enforce them in their own territory if required. Again, while this characteristic is extremely useful from the user's perspective, it is not unique to P.R.I.M.E. Finance but is common to all arbitration as long as the State in which the arbitration takes place and the State in which the award is being enforced are both signatories to the New York Convention. 

Award may be published in anonymous form.  

Under Article 34(5), an award may be made public with the consent of all parties. Furthermore, Article 34(5) permits P.R.I.M.E. Finance to publish an award or order in its entirety, in anonymised form, if no party objects within one month after receipt of the award or order.  The intention behind this provision is to build up a body of precedent case-law which can be relied upon in later proceedings to ensure consistency. 

Seat or place of arbitration in the Netherlands.  

The proceedings are located in a safe, tried and tested, arbitration seat.  The courts of the Netherlands will be available to support arbitration proceedings, if needed. 

The challenges of using P.R.I.M.E. Finance

The challenges of using P.R.I.M.E. Finance as an arbitration institution can be summarised as follows:

Untried and untested.  

As noted above, P.R.I.M.E. Finance was established on 16 January 2012 and it is unlikely to have administered any arbitration proceedings yet, and so it is not clear how effective an institution it is.  As such, the advantages set out above have are yet to be tried or tested.  This is in contrast with proceedings under the auspices of other arbitral institutions such as the ICC and the LCIA who have a long and wide-ranging experience in administering arbitration proceedings.  

Uncertainty about the doctrine of precedent.  

While P.R.I.M.E. Finance's intention to develop a body of precedent case-law is interesting and attempts to deal with the perceived inconsistency of arbitral decisions, it remains to be seen how the system will function.  For example, there is no provision to give the doctrine of precedent binding force on later P.R.I.M.E. Finance arbitral tribunals.  If it is merely to be persuasive, then this is little different to the situation as it stands in other arbitration proceedings which may and do look to judgments of national courts for assistance. 

Risk of lack of anonymity.  

As noted above, in the interests of developing a doctrine of precedent P.R.I.M.E. Finance may publish entire awards or orders in anonymised form without the consent of the parties under Article 34(5).  There is a risk that party anonymity could be lost as the identity of the parties may be obvious from the content of the publication. 

Availability of arbitrators. 

Given that the panel of P.R.I.M.E. Finance is currently limited to approximately 80 experts, there may be an issue of availability of those experts to hear disputes.  The experts do not work for P.R.I.M.E. Finance on an exclusive basis.  A number of them are in demand and already have difficulty in providing sufficient availability in other arbitration proceedings.  This could become an issue as users are restricted to appointing experts from the P.R.I.M.E. Finance panel. 

Background and experience of arbitrators.  

An inherent challenge in relying on a panel of experts is that the scope of industry expertise and nationalities available may not be fully representative.  This may become less of an issue as the panel expands its numbers, but, for the time being, given the restriction to appoint experts from the panel, it may prove difficult to find experts with the background and experience required to deal with certain particular disputes. 

Overall, P.R.I.M.E. Finance is an interesting project and could provide a valuable contribution to resolving complex financial disputes.

Fonte:http://www.allenovery.com/publications/en-gb/Pages/P-R-I-M-E--finance-%E2%80%93-benefits-and-.aspx

Investment Treaties and Investor Corruption: An Emerging Defense for Host States?

Bilateral investment treaties are famously asymmetric. They grant investors rights but not obligations, while imposing upon states obligations unaccompanied by rights. Recent cases suggest, however, that BIT tribunals are poised to recognize a defense to state liability that, in effect, imposes upon investors the obligation to avoid involvement in public corruption in the course of making a treaty-protected investment. Despite these suggestive jurisprudential trends, however, the specific contours of the emerging corruption defense are uncertain, and in a recent article I suggest model investment treaty text for states that wish to secure reliable access to it.[1]

The outcome of the well-known Siemens, A.G. affair illustrates the potential benefits of a corruption defense to host states.[2] The German multinational had won a US$200 million ICSID award against Argentina for Argentina’s unlawful expropriation of a Siemens contract with the state, in violation of the Argentina-Germany BIT. Argentina initiated a long-shot annulment petition. While the petition was pending, it came to light that Siemens executives had systematically encouraged the bribing of public officials worldwide on a massive scale, including in Argentina. Siemens soon found itself engulfed in a series of embarrassing bribery investigations, and eventually admitted its guilt in settlement agreements with U.S. and German anti-corruption authorities. In response to these revelations, Argentina took the procedurally rare move of asking ICSID to “revise” the underlying award. The request to open revision proceedings encouraged Siemens to settle—but for a heavy price. The company abandoned its award in exchange for Argentina’s consent to discontinue the annulment and revision proceedings. The relevance (or irrelevance) of Siemens’ corruption was never authoritatively settled.

What would have happened had Argentina raised (and proved) the corruption during the original proceedings? We can get some rough sense of what might have been by turning to arbitral jurisprudence addressing the relevance of public corruption to private contract disputes. In the private context, corruption most typically arises where a tribunal is asked to enforce a contract between a foreign investor and a local intermediary who has been engaged to facilitate the investor’s bids or applications for state business, ostensibly as a “consultant.”

The seminal decision is a 1963 ad hoc award by Judge Lagergren, the distinguished Swedish lawyer and judge. The claimant, a politically well-connected Argentine, was demanding payment from a foreign investor in the Argentine power sector on a commission contract under which the claimant was allegedly guaranteed a large percentage of the value of any state contracts eventually awarded to the investor. The parties freely admitted that the purpose of the contract was to bribe Argentine officials.

Neither party challenged Lagergren’s authority to decide the merits of the dispute. Yet Lagergren took it upon himself to examine his jurisdiction on his own motion, on the ground that the contract was “condemned by public decency and morality.” He found that relevant domestic law condemned obligations that were against “good morals,” and asserted that it could not “be contested that there exists a general principle of law recognised by civilised nations that contracts which seriously violate bonos mores or international public policy are invalid or at least unenforceable and that they cannot be sanctioned by courts or arbitrators.” Furthermore, “[s]uch corruption is an international evil; it is contrary to good morals and to an international public policy common to the community of nations.” Whether from the perspective of “good government or that of commercial ethics,” it was “impossible” for Judge Lagergren to “close [his] eyes . . . to the destructive effect[s]” of such corruption on “industrial progress.” That meant that he was obligated to decline jurisdiction. As he explained, “[p]arties who ally themselves in an enterprise” involving “gross violations of good morals and international public policy … must realise that they have forfeited any right to ask for assistance of the machinery of justice…in settling their disputes.”

Judge Lagergren’s award has elicited some criticism over the years, primarily concerning his alleged misapplication of the principle of the separability of arbitration clauses. Commentators suggest that he erred in appearing to dispose of the case on jurisdictional grounds, as separability means that a defect in the underlying contract should not be held to nullify an arbitration clause contained therein. That doctrinal controversy aside, numerous private awards now reflect Lagergren’s core position that tribunals should not involve themselves in settling disputes over the performance of obligations involving contracts the object of which is public corruption.[3]

That line of arbitral jurisprudence has recently entered into the stream of contract-based ICSID awards. In World Duty Free Co. Ltd. v. Republic of Kenya,[4] Kenya was alleged to have unlawfully expropriated the claimant’s investment. There was no relevant BIT, and the investment contract selected Kenyan and English law. In the course of proceedings, the investor described in detail how he had obtained the contract by bribing Kenya’s then-President. Kenya seized upon the admission to argue that the case should be dismissed. The tribunal cited Lagergren’s award as well as other sources to affirm that bribery clearly violated “international public policy” as well as Kenyan and English law. The implication for the investor was that it was “not legally entitled to maintain any of its pleaded claims . . . on the ground of ex turpi non oritur action,” as all of the pleaded claims “sound[ed] or depend[ed] upon” the tainted concession agreement.

World Duty Free illustrates the remarkable extent to which anti-corruption ideals have become embedded within the normative regime of international legal practice. While Lagergren had boldly asserted an international public policy against enforcing contracts for corruption many years before, the case for any such public policy actually existing was, at the time, incredibly thin.  Today, thanks to a long line of subsequent private arbitral jurisprudence, to the treatification of anti-corruption principles (e.g. the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention) and to the global diffusion of U.S.-style domestic laws criminalizing foreign corrupt practices, it hardly seems controversial at all to assert that international public policy now indeed condemns corruption, even to the point of allowing a host state—Kenya—to escape liability for expropriating a contract not for corruption itself, but obtainedthrough corruption.

What this international public policy means for investor claims arising under BITs is somewhat less clear. After all, in a BIT claim, the investor is seeking to realize his rights under an internationaltreaty, itself hardly the product of corruption. The corrupt act complained of in Siemens is legally distant, in some sense, from the rights that Siemens was trying to enforce. Virtually no BITs specifically mention corruption, so one issue is how to import anti-corruption principles into the BIT regime. One obvious pathway is the notion of international public policy already mentioned, which BIT arbitrators may have an obligation to support by virtue of the international nature of the disputes they resolve, and of the arbitral institutions under which they serve. Another is the trend toward imputing into BITs an obligation for the investor to act in “good faith” toward the host state, as articulated in the recent award in Plama Consortium Ltd. v. Republic of Bulgaria.[5] Or, perhaps even more promising, anti-corruption principles can be imported through the provisions contained in some BITs that limit the treaty’s  protections to investments made “in accordance” with domestic laws.[6] Since virtually all domestic legal systems declare public corruption illegal, any corruptly acquired investment would seem necessarily to have been made other than “in accordance” with domestic law. And yet, important and unsettled questions remain about the appropriate application of “in accordance” provisions, such as whether an investment’s illegality should be treated as a matter of “admissibility” or “jurisdiction.” Perhaps more importantly, many BITs don’t include “in accordance” provisions, and in those cases the impact of domestic illegality (just like the impact of violations of international public policy) on the investor’s access to BIT protections is even more uncertain.

Of particular concern to those who would like to see the BIT regime severely sanction corrupt investor behavior is the possibility that BIT tribunals will treat investor corruption not as a jurisdictional or preliminary issue (or an issue going to the scope of the state’s consent to arbitration), but rather as an issue that should be “balanced” at the merits stage.[7] Under such an approach, the investor’s blame for corrupting a state official would be balanced against the state’s own involvement in the scheme, perhaps allowing the investor some measure of recovery despite the corrupt origins of his investment.

I’ve argued elsewhere that states should include an article in their BITs clarifying many of these questions. Specifically, I suggested an approach that would require BIT tribunals to treat allegations of corruption as a preliminary issue; if proven, the investor would lose access to the BIT’s dispute-settlement procedures, leaving no opportunity for “balancing” at the merits stage. In a sense, this approach lets state actors get away with accepting bribes, and it has been criticized as unfair and unwise.[8]

But the alternative—allowing tribunals to weigh and balance state and investor fault in a corrupt transaction—places BIT tribunals in a dangerous position. Domestic political regimes, especially after political transitions, may depend for their domestic political support in part on their efforts to “clean house,” that is, to expose and remedy the malfeasance of the prior regime. Those efforts should be supported to the extent that they may help to start a virtuous circle of self-reinforcing anti-bribery norms within the political system. For an ICSID tribunal to hold that a prior regime’s involvement in corruption means that a corruptly-obtained concession can still benefit from BIT protections risks interfering with those efforts to move to a political equilibrium characterized by less frequent corruption. It may also exacerbate public dissatisfaction with the international investment law system by further inflaming popular misperceptions that the system is “biased” against the well-meaning policy decisions of developing-country governments. In contrast, a clean-hands approach, which has clear analogues in domestic contract law, allows tribunals to strongly signal the BIT system’s support for the state’s own anti-bribery efforts.

In conclusion, even in the absence of corruption-specific BIT language, the fact of an investor’s involvement in public corruption related to its investment is likely to be of increasingly legal relevance to the investor’s ability to fully access BIT protections. But even if a “corruption defense” is viable as a matter of what might be called “international common law,” it is a defense whose details remain contested and uncertain. States that wish to secure their reliable and effective access to a corruption defense would be wise to consider amending their investment treaties to include their own preferred version of it.

Author: Jason Yackee is Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School.

ITN can be downloaded in English, French and Spanish at:
➤http://www.iisd.org/itn/2012/10/30/itn-quarterly-october-2012/

Fonte:http://www.iisd.org/itn/2012/10/19/investment-treaties-and-investor-corruption-an-emerging-defense-for-host-states/

A economia da arbitragem: escolha racional e geração de valor

Este texto analisa a arbitragem e suas relações com a jurisdição a partir do conceito de custo de transação. Seu objetivo é mostrar como a arbitragem é capaz de reduzir os custos de transação de um determinado ambiente normativo e contribuir para aperfeiçoar as instituições. 

Os custos relacionados ao uso da arbitragem e da jurisdição funcionam como um preço: quanto maior o custo, menor a procura por eles (e viceversa). potencialmente, a arbitragem pode permitir a redução dos custos de transação em razão (a) da relativa agilidade com que é concluída, (b) da relativa imparcialidade do árbitro e (c) da especialização dos árbitros. 

Além disso, a utilização da arbitragem pode criar melhores incentivos para o adimplemento das obrigações contratuais. Isso porque a inclusão da cláusula arbitral em um contrato dá às partes a possibilidade de regular o ambiente normativo a que se submeterão em caso de disputas. A falta de clareza sobre a legalidade dos procedimentos arbitrais aumenta os custos de transação impostos pelo ambiente normativo. Quanto maior o grau de incerteza, tanto maiores serão os incentivos para que os indivíduos alterem seus padrões negociais ou simplesmente reduzam sua participação em atividades econômicas, reduzindo-se, conseqüentemente, o potencial de geração de riqueza para a sociedade. 

Leia mais aqui: http://bibliotecadigital.fgv.br/dspace/handle/10438/9671