Oglinda & Partners successfully assisted a well-known energy company in an arbitral dispute against a French company. The arbitral award was granted in Switzerland by an arbitral tribunal constituted according to ICC Paris rules and had to be recognised and enforced in Romania.

The lawyers of Oglinda & Partners preserved the client's interests by seizing on Romanian territory the amounts granted by the arbitral award, to remain at the creditor’s disposal until the moment when the exequatur procedure will be finalized, when the seized amount shall pass into the creditor’s hands, this way preventing a situation of inefficiency of the arbitral award.

Legal assistance was provided by Mr. Eugen Sarbu (Partner), Mr. Mihai Ionescu-Balea (Senior Associate) and Mrs. Ana-Maria Damian (Senior Associate).

Conservatory measures, in general, and precautionary garnishment, in special, instituted in the exequatur procedure are extremely rare in Romanian case-law. During the exequatur procedure, the request for interim measures (precautionary garnishment) was filed, which was admitted by the first instance and, moreover, maintained in appeal.

The complexity of this case was given by the excessively rigid interpretation of the law in this matter, resulting in a situation which restricts the company’s possibility to satisfy its receivable.  The interpretation given by Romanian courts was to include the recognition and enforcement request in the bigger category of statements of claim. This way was consolidated the thesis that the application for recognition and enforcement of the arbitral award constitutes proof of the initiation of an action in view of art. 953 RCPC.

Oglinda & Partners is a traditional leading law firm in international arbitration in Romania. Its lawyers specialized in Romanian arbitration coordinated the first emergency arbitrator procedure in Romania and in the last 20 years they were involved as lawyers or arbitrators in more than 300 arbitration cases in front of Romanian and foreign arbitral institutions like ICC, VIAC, LCIA, SCC, SHAC or Eastern Europe Courts of Arbitration, covering a wide range of sectors and industries.