Gazprom Arbitration Court leading among largest arbitration centers
RELEASE
Release
The Company's Board of Directors took notice of the information about the efficiency of the Gazprom Arbitration Court activities.
It was noted that in April of the current year the Gazprom Arbitration Court would celebrate its 20th anniversary. During that time the productive activities of the Court, its well-deserved authority and Arbitrators' professionalism made a considerable contribution to the development of alternative forms of settling disputes in Russia.
Productive activities of Gazprom Arbitration Court made considerable contribution to development of alternative forms of settling disputes in Russia
Over the past two decades the Gazprom Arbitration Court tried more than 1,800 cases, with more than a half of them resolved in the last five years. The number of claims taken for consideration is annually increasing by 5 per cent on average. The Court also has the authority to solve disputes between both Russian and foreign entities. In addition, the number of organizations that are not a part of Gazprom Group applying to the Gazprom Arbitration Court is constantly increasing.
At present, the Gazprom Arbitration Court leads among the largest Russian Arbitration Courts and well-known centers of the international commercial arbitrage by the number of cases being considered.
The popularity of the Gazprom Arbitration Court is largely determined by the quality of the decisions taken. This is guaranteed by the relevant qualification of Arbitrators, their fairness and loyalty. Another advantage of the Gazprom Arbitration Court is promptness of settling disputes and lower court fees comparing with other Russian arbitration courts.
Brand new telecommunication and information technologies are widely applied by the Gazprom Arbitration Court. The Court sessions are regularly held in the videoconference format with secure electronic document exchange. It allows to considerably speed up the disputes settlement among the companies based in different regions and to minimize their employees' expenses of participating in the Court sessions.
Background
The Arbitration Court – a form of legal dispute settlement between the parties not by state courts but by impartial third party individuals chosen or agreed to by the contending parties by mutual consent or statutory provision.
The Gazprom Arbitration Court was set up in 1993. The Arbitrators are well-known lawyers and reputed legislators – Russian experts. 53 people are included in the Arbitrators list, though the disputing parties are eligible to choose Arbitrators external to this list.
On December 21, 2010 the Gazprom Arbitration Court held for the first time in the history of Russian arbitration courts a remote arbitration court meeting in the videoconference format. From March 29, 2011 the Arbitration Court started applying secure electronic document exchange with the use of the digital signature at all the stages of the arbitration proceeding.