We previously reported here that a Geneva-seated UNCITRAL tribunal (the “Tribunal“) constituted under the India-Germany Bilateral Investment Treaty dated 10 July 1995 (the “India-Germany BIT”) found India in breach of its treaty obligations in relation to its cancellation of a spectrum allocation contract[1] (the “Contract“) in an interim award dated 13 December 2017 (the “Award“).
The Contract was entered into in 2005 between Devas Multimedia Private Limited (“Devas“), an Indian company and Antrix Corporation Limited (“Antrix“), an Indian state-owned satellite company, wherein Devas agreed to pay a fee in return for the lease of the S-band electromagnetic spectrum provided by two orbiting Indian satellites. In the arbitration before the Tribunal, the Claimant, Deutsche Telekom AG (“DT“) (which indirectly held a 20% stake in Devas via a Singaporean subsidiary) alleged a breach of the fair and equitable treatment standard under the India-Germany BIT.
In the Award, the Tribunal dealt with issues of jurisdiction and liability (leaving aside issues of quantum for a later award), and held that it possessed jurisdiction to hear the dispute and that India had indeed violated the standard of fair and equitable treatment under the India-Germany BIT.
India sought to challenge the Award in the Swiss Federal Tribunal (“Federal Tribunal“), being the court of supervision of the arbitration. In a decision last month, the First Civil Law Court of the Federal Tribunal rejected India’s application for the annulment of the Award by a 3:2 majority in a judgment dated 11 December 2018 (available here (in French)).