WASHINGTON: Pakistan has requested a US federal court to pause an Australian copper company’s bid to enforce a $6 billion arbitral award while it looks to have the award nixed, a New York-based legal publication Law360 reported on Friday.
The company — Tethyan Copper Co. Pty Ltd — won the award last summer following a dispute over the rejected Reko Diq mining project in Balochistan province of Pakistan.
Pakistan argued in a federal court in Washington that the enforcement could have “devastating consequences for its political and economic stability”, said the author, Caroline Simson.
In a brief submitted in the court on Friday, Pakistan argued that Tethyan “shouldn’t be allowed to proceed with the litigation while it looks to annul the award based on “numerous substantive and procedural errors”.
The report noted that the award is the second largest ever to be issued by the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) and equals 2 percent of Pakistan’s annual gross domestic product and 40 percent of its total liquid foreign reserves.
The ICSID is an international arbitration institution established in 1966 for legal dispute resolution and conciliation between international investors and is part of and funded by the World Bank Group, headquartered in Washington.
