Foley Hoag helped the Republic of Ghana secure victory when an arbitral tribunal constituted under the Rules of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) ruled in favor of the country in a tax dispute brought by Tullow Ghana Limited (TGL), Ghana’s largest petroleum producer.

In its decision, the tribunal dismissed all of TGL’s claims and upheld in full the Ghana Revenue Authority’s (GRA) tax assessment of more than $393 million (including a 100% penalty) arising from TGL’s income tax liability for 2016–2019 on business interruption insurance proceeds.

“The Tribunal’s decision is a resounding victory for the Republic of Ghana and the Ghana Revenue Authority,” said Tafadzwa Pasipanodya, the Foley Hoag partner who led the representation of Ghana in this matter. “What the Tribunal did here is also significant for other states defending tax revenue measures. It applied the standard the Ghanaian Supreme Court itself applies to administrative decisions, asking whether the Ghana Revenue Authority’s conclusions were ones that could reasonably have been reached on the material before it. Tribunals are rightly cautious about second-guessing a sovereign’s tax administration, and this award reflects that caution applied with rigor.”

The tribunal unanimously declared that the GRA assessment does not constitute a breach of Article 12 of the Petroleum Agreements. It upheld the income tax assessment, the penalty, and the assessment for the 2016 and 2017 tax years against TGL’s limitation challenge, and it held that the GRA’s enforcement proceedings of January 2023 did not breach Article 24.10 of the Deepwater Tano Petroleum Agreement.

The Foley Hoag team was led by Pasipanodya and included Nicholas Renzler, Nour Nicolas, Sun Young Hwang, Jago Chanter, and Bojana Bilankov. Peter Shults of Shults Law Firm worked as co-counsel. The team defended the State alongside Attorney-General Dominic Akuritinga Ayine, Deputy Attorney-General Justice Srem-Sai, Solicitor-General Helen Akpene Awo Ziwu, and state attorneys Anna Pearl Akiwumi Siriboe, Grace Oppong Dolphy, and Adwoa Obenewah Amoah, as well as the Ghana Revenue Authority.