13 April 2021 | Many poor countries were pushed to privatize their pension systems to the benefit of international pension funds and insurance companies. After reversing this costly failure, they are sued by financial companies who want their expected profits guaranteed.
13 December 2020 | Investor State Dispute Settlement, those special tribunals which foreign investors can use to sue a host government for alleged infringement on their rights, have drawn criticism for being one sided. Investors can sue governments, but not vice versa. Arbitration counsel Juan Carlos Boue describes a case, which takes this to the […]
20 November 2020 | The special tribunals which allow potential or actual foreign investors to sue governments for infringements on their rights outside the regular courts are often the most criticized component of free trade agreements. Juan Carlos Boué gives an example in this guest comment, which makes it clear why this is so.
15 November 2023 | A British court has annulled an 11 billion dollar compensation award that Nigeria was supposed to pay to the company of two fortune-seekers who cheated and bribed from contract initiation to arbitration. The judge warned that the whole thing could easily have ruined Nigeria’s public finances. The investor state arbitration tribunals […]
19 October 2021 | In this guest column, arbitration lawyer Juan Carlos Boué presents the case of Columbia, which has included an environmental exception in their treaty with Canada. Still they were sentenced by a tribunal to pay damages to a Canadian mining company for a ruling of their highest court, which imposed mining restrictions […]
28 June 2021 | In 1970 Shell caused a huge oil spill in Nigeria. After finally being sentenced to pay damages to the affected community by the highest Nigerian court, Shell is now starting investor-state arbitration proceedings, to drag out the case even more, writes Juan Carlos Boué.
16 March 2021 | On March 5, 2021, it was announced that the Germany had reached an agreement with the Swedish state company Vattenfall to settle a claim valued at up to €7 billion, over the phase-out of nuclear energy in the wake of Fukushima. The government pay Vattenfall €1.4 billion, much too much, argues […]