Experts: foreign arbitrators will not attract investors to Russia

Creation of commercial arbitration with participation of foreign lawyers will hardly increase the investment attractiveness of Russia, but might become a nice PR-action for the Russian judicial system. Such was the opinion voiced to RAPSI/rapsinews.ru by the experts commenting on the idea by Alexander Konovalov, Minister of Justice of the Russian Federation.

The Minister declared Monday that the attraction of the foreign investors would be favored by the creation of a “full-fledged commercial arbitration, which would include, among others, representatives of foreign states, renowned competent lawyers with years of work, with experience and flawless reputation”.

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Advocate Alexander Bolomatov, Associated Partner at the Law Firm "YUST", points out that the sphere of application of international commercial arbitration is currently shrinking, and the very institute is not an advanced way of dispute settlement. He says: “The inclusion of foreign arbitrators within such arbitration will not make any crucial difference, even though someone would be interested in submitting their dispute for consideration by five or six arbitrators of flawless reputation”.

According to A.Bolomatov, such arbitration is no panacea. The expert believes that it could draw off approximately 1% of the disputes.

A.Bolomatov states: “It is rather an efficient PR-action: well-reputed judges are coming to work for us, this means that the Russian dispute settlement system can be trusted. If such people choose to come, they would put their honest name at the stake”.

The Advocate adds that the arbitration envisioned by the Minister of Justice would not take a large portion of the disputes. The expert says: “In this framework, it would rather be seen as an indicator of the health of the general system of dispute settlement in Russia, and not as an independent institute”.

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