Foley Hoag LLP and co-counsel Luca De Maria of PMG avocats secured a victory for Venezuela against mining company Rusoro, obtaining the partial set-aside by the Paris Court of Appeal of a US$ 1.3 billion award rendered on August 22, 2016 by an investment arbitration tribunal under the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) rules.

In a ruling issued on January 29, 2019, the Paris Court of Appeal upheld arguments presented by Venezuela, deciding that the arbitral tribunal lacked jurisdiction to issue its damages award under the Venezuela-Canada bilateral investment treaty since it awarded compensation based on calculations that took into account facts falling outside the temporal scope of its jurisdiction as defined in the treaty. The Court annulled the tribunal’s damages award of US$ 966,500,000 plus interest and awarded Venezuela 100,000 euros in costs.  

In the Paris proceedings, the Foley Hoag team was comprised of former partner Thomas Bevilacqua, counsel Ivan Urzhumov and associate Antoine Lerosier, who worked in coordination with a team from Washington and Boston led by Derek Smith and Andrew Loewenstein, with particular assistance from Anna Toubiana. 

During the arbitration and U.S. enforcement proceedings, the Foley Hoag team was led by partner Derek Smith and included partner Andrew Loewenstein, counsels Alberto Wray, Diego Cadena, Analía González, Christina Beharry and Christopher Hart, and current and former attorneys José Rebolledo, Erin Argueta, Ofilio Mayorga, Oonagh Sands, Peter Shults, Benjamin Guthrie, Thomas Ayres and Melinda Kuritzky.

Foley Hoag represented Venezuela in investor-State disputes for more than ten years before ending its representation in 2018.