Armenia Wins Two Cases in Arbitration Court

“You have put the Republic of Armenia in the dock, saying that there are payments through arbitration that you are already distributing,” Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan responded during his recent press conference when asked by a newspaper correspondent whether the government's burden would increase if HEC appeals to arbitration and whether the government would be able to pay those millions. This was reported by the newspaper Joghvourds.

Pashinyan continued, “Who said Armenia is going to lose in arbitration? In recent times, Armenia has won several cases in arbitration. So when you say ‘arbitration’ again, the panic spread, and confusion began.”

To discuss facts, we sent an inquiry to the Government of Armenia to find out in which cases the Republic of Armenia has achieved victories in arbitration courts regarding claims made against Armenia. We sought to understand how many claims are currently against Armenia in arbitration and what obligations Armenia has regarding those claims, specifically how much the claims amount to (we requested the amounts in US dollars).

The response to our inquiry indicated that the total amount of claims against Armenia in arbitration is $1.5 billion.

Armenia has won in two instances: the first was the case of “Edmond Khudyans and Arin Capital Investments against the Republic of Armenia.” In this case, a mutual obligation was imposed on the latter to pay the Republic of Armenia $337,466.34, representing the advance payment made to the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes, and $400,000 to cover legal expenses incurred by the Republic of Armenia in the arbitration case.

The second arbitration victory was in the case of “J. Borkovski and Rasia FZE against the Republic of Armenia,” where the claims of the plaintiffs were entirely rejected, and they were obliged to compensate the Republic of Armenia a total of $2,783,250.09, which was later executed by the plaintiffs following a cancellation procedure initiated.

The Government of Armenia officially informed Joghvourds that claims against the Republic of Armenia still remain, including cases against “Walnort Finance Limited,” “Amulsar Investor Ventures LLC,” “Sanitek S.a.r.l., Sari Haddad and Elias Doumet,” and “Air Arabia.”