Month: February 2015

  • Belfast Project: Court of Appeal Rejects Rae’s Argument

    The Court of Appeal in Belfast has dismissed Winston “Winkie” Rae’s application to quash the decision of the Director of Public Prosecutions to seek to obtain Rae’s Belfast Project interview tapes by way of an MLAT request to the United States. While it does not seem the judgment has yet been published, the court has……

  • Ambassador Cely Prepares to Return to Ecuador

    Ambassador Nathalie Cely Suárez, Ecuador’s ambassador to Washington since 2012, will soon be returning to Ecuador to join President Correa’s cabinet. Her new portfolio will include tourism, trade, industry, labor, agriculture, and infrastructure. I haven’t seen an announcement about her successor as ambassador.

  • Case of the Day: Mobil Cerro Negro v. Venezuela

    The case of the day is Mobil Cerro Negro, Ltd. v. Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (S.D.N.Y. 2015). In 2007, Venezuela expropriated Mobil’s interest in various oil projects in the country. Mobil commenced an ICSID arbitration under a bilateral investment treaty. In 2014, the tribunal awarded Mobil approximately $1.6 billion, which remains unpaid. A day after……

  • More on the Draft Judgments Convention In The Light Of COCA

    I wanted to add a few comments to my observations about the new draft text of a Judgments Convention from yesterday:

  • Lago Agrio: MCSquared Sues Sharon Stone?

    Here is the most amusing ancillary litigation to arise out of the Lago Agrio to date, as far as I know. MCSquared, the PR firm that Ecuador hired, that failed at first to register as Ecuador’s agent under the FARA, and that paid Mia Farrow to visit Ecuador to support the government’s PR efforts, has……