The Carlyle Group LP and others v Morocco ICSID Case No. ARB/18/29 - Request for Arbitration - 31 July 2018
Country
Year
2018
Summary
Reproduced from www.worldbank.org/icsid with permission of ICSID.
The Carlyle Group L.P., Carlyle Investment Management L.L.C., Carlyle Commodity Management L.L.C., TC Group, L.L.C., TC Group Investment Holdings, L.P., Celadon Commodities Fund, LP, and Celadon Partners, LLC
and
The Kingdom of Morocco
REQUEST FOR ARBITRATION
1. The Carlyle Group L.P., Carlyle Investment Management L.L.C., Carlyle Commodity Management L.L.C., TC Group, L.L.C., TC Group Investment Holdings, L.P., Celadon Commodities Fund, LP, and Celadon Partners, LLC (collectively, "Claimants") submit this request for arbitration (the "Request for Arbitration") to the Secretary General of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes ("ICSID" or the "Centre") in accordance with Article 10.15 of the United States Morocco Free Trade Agreement (the "FTA")[1] and Article 36 of the Convention for the Settlement of Investment Disputes between States and Nationals of Other States (the "ICSID Convention").
2. Claimants made investments in Morocco after the date of entry into force of the FTA. Starting in or around August 2015, the Kingdom of Morocco ("Respondent" or the "Government") commenced wrongful actions in breach of Articles 10.5 and 10.6 of the FTA that rendered Claimants' investments unrecoverable and caused Claimants to suffer losses in excess of US$400 million.
3. As further described below, starting in early 2015, Claimants made a series of investments in Morocco through investment agreements with the Société Anonyme Marocaine de l'Industrie du Raffinage ("SAMIR"), a corporation organized under the laws of Morocco, that ultimately totaled more than US$400 million. Starting in or around August 2015, and continuing into the Fall of 2015, Respondent seized assets of SAMIR, including storage and refinery facilities and also bank accounts, which Respondent knew or should have known respectively contained commodities (consisting of crude oil and other petroleum products) and cash belonging to Claimants and then: (i) swept SAMIR's bank accounts, which contained cash proceeds from sales of commodities that took place prior to August 2015, which proceeds were owed--but had not yet been remitted--to Claimants by SAMIR; and (ii) instructed parties that had purchased commodities belonging to Claimants prior to that time to pay SAMIR (rather than Claimants) for Claimants' outstanding accounts receivable.
Respondent additionally directed that SAMIR employees sell commodities in SAMIR's storage facility that were owned by Claimants into the local market. Respondent has neither returned any of the commodities or cash proceeds owned by Claimants, nor offered any compensation or restitution to Claimants for their losses.
[1] See Authority CA-1; see also statement by Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP regarding the documents attached to this Request for Arbitration, Exhibit C-1.
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