AGA Partners is pleased to announce a successful outcome in a case before the Commercial Court of Sumy Region, where we represented the Swiss branch of a major Chinese agribusiness corporation. The case was part of broader proceedings to recognise and enforce a London-seated arbitration award in Ukraine against a Ukrainian debtor reported in our previous publications.

In a strategic attempt to evade enforcement of an arbitral award, the Debtor filed a lawsuit seeking to invalidate the underlying sales contract that served as the basis for the arbitration. The Debtor primarily argued that the parties never exchanged the original version of the contract.

AGA Partners challenged the jurisdiction of the commercial court, arguing that the arbitration agreement had been duly confirmed by both Ukrainian courts and the arbitral tribunal, and the contract itself had been repeatedly acknowledged as valid.

The court rejected the Debtor’s claims as unfounded, citing several key points: (1) the issue of the contract’s validity had already been addressed during the arbitration; (2) the contract contained a valid arbitration clause mandating resolution of disputes (including the ones on validity of the contract) only through arbitration; and (3) the presumption of the arbitration agreement’s validity had not been rebutted.

Accordingly, the court dismissed the case without consideration, reaffirming the binding nature of the arbitration clause between the parties.

The case was handled by Partner Iryna Moroz, Senior Associate Dmytro Izotov, and Associate Maksym Fesenko.