Mansur Maqsudi, the former Mr. Gulnora Karimova, has faced all but impossible odds in recovering property seized in Uzbekistan after his divorce. (And one could say that he has absolutely no chance in the custody case.) Law.com has an interesting article on how Maqsudi’s lawyer is trying to win back his Coca-Cola investment in Uzbekistan, and how the strategy may help clarify an unclear part of US law.
The lawyer whom Maqsudi retained to recover his investment — Stuart Newberger of Crowell & Moring — had no obvious course of action. He could not sue Uzbekistan directly, because the nation had never signed an investment treaty with the United States. He could sue Coca-Cola for conniving in the vendetta, under the arbitration agreement signed by the members of the bottling joint venture — but it would be tough to implicate Coke without a broad U.S.-style discovery expedition. Newberger found an explosive solution in a quiet nook of federal procedure, 28 U.S.C. 1782.
Seldom used for 40 years, §1782 allows discovery in the U.S. courts in aid of a foreign “tribunal.”
In the 2004 Supreme Court decision in the case of Intel Corp. v. Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., a footnote suggested that the same logic that allows the European Commission to be considered a tribunal might be applicable to arbitral tribunal. And interestingly enough, judges ruled in another case involving Central Asian investment gone awry, Oxus Gold plc v. Kyrgyz Republic, that the Supreme Court ruling extended to investment arbitration. Following the 2006 decision, Maqsudi’s attorney, Stuart Newberger, argued that the ruling extended to private commercial arbitration. An Atlanta federal district court agreed, and forced Coca-Cola to cough up thousands of emails that may help Maqsudi prove the company went along with the Karimov government’s decision to seize his investment in the Tashkent bottling company and transfer it to a Swiss company partially owned by Gulnora Karimova. Though Coca-Cola is appealing the decision, the arbitrators in Vienna already have received briefs on the emails and will hear their merits in September.
This post was written by...
Nathan Hamm – author of 2974 posts on Registan.net.
Nathan is the Founding Editor and Publisher of Registan.net, which he launched in 2003. He was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Uzbekistan 2000-2001 and received his MA in Central Asian Studies from the University of Washington in 2007. Since 2007, he has worked full-time as an analyst, consulting with private and government clients on Central Asian affairs, specializing in how socio-cultural and political factors shape risks and opportunities and how organizations can adjust their strategic and operational plans to account for these variables. Nathan is currently seeking research, analysis, and consulting opportunities. He can be contacted via Twitter or email.
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