In the second of two leading articles, Khawar Qureshi QC puts ethics in international arbitration under the spotlight
The majority of arbitration decisions on ethical matters focus on the obligations of arbitrators. Key publicly available decisions are referred to below.
A Arbitrators
ICSID decisions
In Alpha Projektholding GMBH v Ukraine ICSID Case No. ARB/07/16 (19 March 2010), the tribunal dismissed an application to disqualify an arbitrator based on his shared educational experience with counsel for the claimant and failure to disclose this, along with his purported lack of arbitral experience and a brief phone call by counsel for the claimant to the arbitrator to determine whether he would be available to serve. The two members found that the applicant had failed to prove any fact that would indicate a manifest lack of impartiality or independence on the part of the arbitrator.
In its decision, the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) Tribunal sought “guidance from the 2004 International Bar Association (IBA) Guidelines on Conflicts of Interest in International Arbitration [IBA guidelines]”. Those guidelines were regarded as instructive
