SINGAPORE Trends and Developments Contributed by: KOH Swee Yen, SC, Wendy LIN, TIONG Teck Wee and Monica CHONG Wan Yee, WongPartnership LLP
The claimants obtained leave to enforce three final arbitration awards against Russia, which leave orders Russia then sought to set aside on the ground that it is immune from the jurisdiction of the Singapore courts pursuant to Section 3 (1) of the State Immunity Act 1979. Section 3 (1) is subject to exceptions provided for in the Act, including Section 11 (1), which states that “[w]here a State has agreed in writing to submit a dispute which has arisen, or may arise, to arbitration, the State is not immune as respects proceedings in the courts in Singapore which relate to the arbitra- tion” (“Arbitration Exception”). The question before the SICC was therefore whether Russia had “agreed in writing to submit” the disputes underlying the awards to arbitration such that the Arbitration Exception was engaged. The SICC found that the legal and factual issues which are determinative of that question were the subject of final and conclusive decisions on the merits in the set- ting-aside application brought before the Dutch seat court. Applying the Doctrine, Russia was precluded from contending that it had not “agreed in writing to submit” the disputes to arbitration. Notably, the UK Court of Appeal took a similar stance in Hulley Enter- prises Ltd and others v The Russian Federation [2025] EWCA Civ 108. The UK Court of Appeal held there that, in light of the Dutch seat court’s decision, Rus- sia was estopped from re-arguing that there was no binding arbitration agreement. In reaching that view, the UK Court of Appeal expressly considered the Doc- trine as applied in Deutsche Telekom , noting the utility of the case as “the decision arose on materially the same facts as those of the present case, with a legal framework materially the same as in England”. Section 12 IAA orders and directions of a provisional nature are not susceptible to setting aside – DLS v DLT [2025] SGHC 61 The General Division of the High Court declined to set aside an arbitral tribunal’s order for a contractor to make monthly payments to the subcontractor until final completion of the project (“Monthly Payment Decision”), finding that the decision was an interim order under Section 12 of the International Arbitra- tion Act (IAA) and thus was not an “award” capable of being set aside.
The Court held that whether a decision is an “award” (which Section 2 of the IAA defines as “a decision of the arbitral tribunal on the substance of the dispute and includes any interim, interlocutory or partial award but excludes any order or direction made under sec- tion 12”) is a matter of substance, not form. The fact that the Monthly Payment Decision was contained in what the arbitral tribunal labelled as its “First Partial Award” was therefore not determinative of the ques- tion. Properly construed, the Monthly Payment Deci- sion was provisional in nature as (among other things) it did not definitively or finally dispose of any issue or claim in the arbitration, was inherently capable of being varied in due course, and was indeed expressly stated (in the “First Partial Award”) to be of an “interim nature” and “subject to review in the Final Award”. By contrast, the Court held that the other decision contained in the “First Partial Award”, which ordered the contractor to make a lump sum payment to the subcontractor (representing VAT refunds owed) with no further conditions, was an award within the mean- ing of Section 2 IAA and was capable of being set aside as it was not provisional in nature. The Court, however, declined to set aside this decision as it found that no grounds for setting aside were established on the facts. Reproduction of the contents of awards from prior related arbitrations by a tribunal in its award could amount to actual or apparent bias, and could result in the award being set aside for breach of the rules of natural justice – DOI v DOJ and others [2025] SGHC(I) 15 (“DOI”) DOI is a continuation of the dispute in DJO v DJP (“ DJO ”), which was covered in the 2024 edition of this chapter. In DOI , the SICC granted an application to set aside an ICC award on the ground that there had been a breach of the rules of natural justice. The award was handed down by a three-member tri- bunal. The defendants in DOI , who were the claim- ants in the arbitration, nominated “Arbitrator A” as their party-appointed arbitrator. The claimant in DOI , who was the respondent in the arbitration, nominated “Arbitrator B” as its party-appointed arbitrator. Arbi- trators A and B then nominated “Arbitrator C” as the presiding arbitrator, thereby constituting the tribunal.
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