Enforcement order granted for ICC award by Dutch court without substantive review of corruption allegations (Cardo v CBI)

Article summary

Arbitration analysis: This judgment concerns the enforcement in the Netherlands of an award rendered in an arbitration between Cardno Middle East Ltd (‘Cardno’) and the Central Bank of Iraq (‘CBI’). The arbitral tribunal had refused to review the merits of CBI’s corruption allegations because the proceedings had been closed and CBI only started participating the arbitration after the closure of the proceedings and raised its corruption allegations at this late stage. In the Dutch enforcement proceedings, the Court of Appeal of Amsterdam decided in line with the recent setting aside case law of the Dutch Supreme Court in Russian Federation v HYV, according to which corruption allegations must be reviewed with restraint and must be raised in the arbitration without delay so that the arbitral tribunal can review those allegations. The fact that the arbitral tribunal had not reviewed the corruption allegations in Cardno v CBI was not a ground to refuse enforcement of...