Chaffetz Lindsey Wins Enforcement of $26 Million Arbitral Award Against Kyrgyz Republic

April 2020 – On April 22, 2020, a federal district court in the District of Columbia granted our petition on behalf of Turkish-based Entes Industrial Plants Construction & Erection Contracting Co. to enforce an arbitral award for over $26 million (including interest) against the Kyrgyz Republic.  The award resulted from a Bishkek-seated UNCITRAL arbitration chaired by Michael E. Schneider.

Previously, in October 2019, the District Court had granted our petition to confirm the award against the named debtor, the Kyrgyz Ministry of Transport and Communications.  In its second decision, the court now found that the Republic “properly [could] be held liable for the actions taken and the money owed by the Ministry.”  More specifically, the court ruled that the Ministry was not entitled to a presumption of separateness under the United States Supreme Court’s decision in First National City Bank v. Banco Para El Comercio Exterior de Cuba, 462 U.S. 611 (1983), and that an agency relationship existed between the Republic and the Ministry.

The Chaffetz Lindsey team was led by Andreas Frischknecht and included Ted Debonis, Lilian Marques, Marcel Cardoso and Luke Muhammad.

Read Law360 and Global Arbitration Review‘s coverage of the case.