News

VEGAS LEX's Real Estate, Land & Construction practice chaired by firm's partner Igor Chumachenko succeeded in protecting interests of a major pharmaceutical company based in Moscow outskirts. The disputes were crucial to the client and related to a main contractor agreement and a bank guarantee.
The controversy emerged from a pharmaceutical plant construction project in Moscow outskirts. The opponents tried to deliberately dispute the court's jurisdiction and discredit by any means the bank guarantee and actions of the bank and the pharma company. 

The main contractor failed to fulfill its obligations to finish construction and address deficiencies, and the client terminated the agreement. Before that, however, the company had received the payment under the guarantee (performance bond) against penalty for late construction works. 

Despite the arbitration clause that was included in the agreement, the main contractor tried to challenge the payment in court. To deliberately dispute the court's jurisdiction, the opponents brought the bank into the court proceeding as a co-appellee and used a collective claim (which cannot be used in this dispute). The client took legal action and went to the International Commercial Arbitration Court at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation (ICAC). 

As a result, the commercial court rejected the lawsuit filed by the main contractor requesting to find the payment under the guarantee illegal (the main contractor failed in overturning the judgment in the court of appeal and the judgment became final and binding). The ICAC sustained the client's claim concerning recovery of the down payment not covered by the work and the outstanding amount of penalty and fines for breaching the contract.

We congratulate the team: Igor Chumachenko, Ekaterina Ivanushkina, Ekaterina Etenko.

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You will find more information about VEGAS LEX’s activity in Real Estate, Land & Construction here.