Chaired by Konstantin Chuichenko, Member of the Management Committee, Head of the Legal Department of Gazprom a Workshop Conference dedicated to the 15th anniversary of the Gazprom Arbitration Court took place today at the Company’s Headquarters.

Participating in the Conference were judges of the Arbitration Court, representatives of Gazprom’s departments, legal services specialists of the Company’s subsidiaries, representatives of arbitration courts, Russian scientists and experts in the area of arbitration proceedings.

The Conference highly appraised the Gazprom Arbitration Court’s activity. It was pointed out that the Court’s honored reputation and its judges’ professionalism had made a solid contribution to developing alternative dispute settlement forms in Russia.

The conferees addressed the development background and prospects of arbitration courts as well as their increasing significance as a major tool for alternative settlement of economic disputes.

A focus was placed on the distinctive features of arbitration proceedings in the gas industry, specific nature of commercial disputes in the international economic relations, possibilities and ways of promoting dispute settlement by arbitration and conciliation procedures (mediation) among Russia’s business community.

The participants emphasized that the current stage of the Russian civil society’s development pointed to a need for broader use of alternative forms of economic dispute settlement, with arbitration as a crucial one.

Reference:

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 permanent Arbitration Court of Gazprom was set up in 1993 pursuant to the RAO Gazprom Charter for the purpose of settling economic disputes between the Company’s subsidiaries.

Since 2003 the Court has been resolving disputes not only between Russian legal entities and individual businessmen, but also between business entities registered in the CIS countries.

Over 15 years of its activity the Gazprom Arbitration Court has tried 818 cases, with no reversal of its judgments recorded.