On 17 May, with the support of the Association of Antitrust Experts (AAE), a round table entitled “New ‘Antimonopoly’ Resolution of the Russian Supreme Court’s Plenum”, a satellite event of the St. Petersburg International Legal Forum, was held.

The event included two sessions focusing on (1) material law; and (2) procedural law aspects of the Plenum’s Resolution, with the representatives of the Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) together with the leading legal experts and scholars speaking, including the members of the working group in charge of formulating the position with respect to the draft prepared by the Russian Supreme Court’s Plenum.

Nato Tskhakaya, counsel and head of RGP’s Antitrust and Competition practice and member of AAE, moderated the procedural law session.

“The importance of the Resolution of the Supreme Court’s Plenum for the case law, where each word is worth its weight in gold, can hardly be overestimated” Nato Tskhakaya told Pravo.ru. “However, certain issues remain open and, as part of the round table, we managed to discuss the procedural aspects of antimonopoly disputes affected by the Resolution from the point of view of practicing lawyers, the FAS and the scholars and exchange valuable expert opinions.”

The round table was held in a hybrid format – offline in Moscow and with an online broadcast on YouTube.

The recording of the event and the speakers’ presentations in Russian are available here.

On 18 May, as part of the private programme within Track 5 (Dispute Resolution), RGP held its own discussion – ‘Cross-border disputes involving Russian parties: recent practice and unconventional solutions’.

Ilya Rybalkin, Co-Head of RGP’s Dispute Resolution practice, moderated the session with Ivan Meleshenko, RGP’s partner, appearing as one of the key speakers.

“I am happy that Russia and Russian business take an active part in shaping and developing case law in foreign courts and arbitration centres. And I am not being ironic here. A dozen years ago, a dispute involving Russian law before a foreign court looked more like a fantasy. Today, cases involving Russian substantive law are becoming routine practice, with the Russian businesses continuing to headline tabloids and legal publications,” Ilya Rybalkin noted.

Ivan Meleshenko, RGP’s partner at Dispute Resolution practice, together with Alex Stolyar, a partner at Loeb & Loeb, discussed, proceeding from their common experience, efficient (and often underrated, like Section 1782) tools to collect information and evidence granted by the US legal system which may be applied for the purposes of disputes before Russian and foreign courts and to combat complicated cross-border fraud schemes.

Paul McGrath QC from the Essex Court Chambers, a recognised expert in asset tracing and recovery, with whom RGP co-operates in a number of high-stake cases before the BVI courts and the courts of England and Wales with the Russian clients involved, spoke, referring to his practice, about state-of-the-art approaches to the application of a global freezing order and their impact on foreign trusts and funds which serve as tools to protect personal assets (as a rule, those of the defendants). Paul also raised the issue of Norwich Pharmacal orders in the context of court proceedings.

Peter Gloushkov, Advisor to the General Director on International Legal Matters, PJSC Tatneft, shared his experience of being involved in foreign proceedings from the perspective of an in-house lawyer, touching upon such landmark issues as case management, counsel management, financial management of such cases, etc.

Peter and Paul also discussed the maturity of the UK legal system and the interaction between Russian companies and QCs and law firms as part of English proceedings.

The recording of the event will be available in the Forum participant’s account during three months.

On 21 May, as part of SPBILF’s public programme, the session entitled “A View from Singapore and SIAC on Russia-Related Disputes” took place.

The session focused on the resolution of disputes by the Russian parties in SIAC, an arbitration centre becoming more and more popular among Russian businesses, which has recently been licenced by the Russian Ministry of Justice to administer arbitration proceedings in Russia.

At the session, the experts shared their opinion on SIAC and the Singapore dispute resolution ecosystem from the point of view of the SIAC President and Secretariat, counsel, arbitrator and in-house counsel and discussed the strategies of effective resolution of disputes at SIAC, SIAC’s practices and procedures for disputes involving Russian parties, and Singapore’s approach to unilateral sanctions imposed by other countries.

The session was moderated Dmitry Dyakin, Co-Head of RGP’s Dispute Resolution practice.

Gary Born, Partner and Chair of the International Arbitration Practice Group at WilmerHale and President of the Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC) Court of Arbitration, was a special guest at the event.

The speakers also included Kevin Nash, Deputy Registrar and Centre Director, SIAC, Natalia Zaitseva, General Counsel at Power Machines JSC, and Edmund Kronenburg, Managing Partner at Braddell Brothers.

Summing up the session Dmitry Dyakin stated: “Clearly, the number of Russia/CIS related arbitrations in SIAC is to increase – I think the caseload will be five times bigger in 5 years. With the current number there already so many interesting issues that we have only covered a dash of them. So, I am certain we will have plenty topics to discuss in the coming months and years. See you soon.”

The recording of the event will be available in the Forum’s official website during three months.