TIRANA, July 25 – Albanian authorities have a deadline until August 20 to oppose the decision taken by the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) to an arbitral tribunal, part of the World Bank, in favor of Italian entrepreneur Francesco Becchetti and several companies and partners, his mother Liliana Condomitti and her associates Mauro de Renzis and Stefania Grigolon, for closing “Agon” television a few years back.
ICSID fined Albania with 110m euros, judging that closing the activity of “Agon” TV was a “politically motivated” action.
The decision was made on April 24. Two months later, the State Advocacy Office announced the “start of the competition procedure for the selection and contracting of a lawyer or a domestic or foreign lawyer’s office” with the purpose of “representing and protecting the interests of the Republic of Albania within the process the annulment of an arbitration award in ICSID.”
Cancellation is an extraordinary form of recourse foreseen in the protection of basic legal principles related to this process. A party may request the full or partial annulment of a decision based on at least one of the five cases provided by the ICSID rules itself: when the trial panel is incorrectly formed; when it has overturned its power; when a corruption case was found by one of the members; when deviation from one of the basic rules of procedures was observed and when the decision could not prove the grounds on which it was based.
It is not known which of these clauses will be used by the Albanian side in challenging the decision, which represents the highest value with which Albania has ever been convicted by an arbitral tribunal.
