Lawyers of the REVERA law group arbitration team defended the interests of a Belarusian company at the Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC) in a case for recovery of prepayment, default interest and damages under a supply contract with a Malaysian company.
The Belarusian company had concluded a supply contract with a large public Malaysian company, a manufacturer of medical goods. The goods should have been delivered by sea to the port of Klaipeda and then to Minsk; however, the Malaysian supplier delivered only a part of the goods. Moreover, in the process of acceptance it turned out that the goods were partially damaged and not suitable for use.
The parties’ pre-trial negotiations were unsuccessful and the Belarusian company decided to apply to arbitration to start a dispute regarding the recovery of debts for non-delivered and low-quality goods.
The REVERA team applied for an accelerated procedure before a sole arbitrator, which was examined and approved by the SIAC Chairman. Such an approach reduced the time and cost for the client.
The key issue in the dispute was the determination of the applicable law under which the dispute should be resolved, as the contract between the parties did not provide for this point and Malaysia was not a party to the 1980 Vienna Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods.
The Singapore law and the relevant court practice had proved that the dispute should be considered under the law of the Republic of Belarus and the Vienna Convention, as closely related to the contract, rather than under the general rule under the law of the supplier’s country, because the issue was not the delivery itself, but the return of the prepayment and the payment of penalties.
As a result, the arbitrator supported the Belarusian company’s position and recovered from the Malaysian supplier the amount of the advance payment, the amount of the debt for the partially undelivered and low-quality goods, the amount of the penalty for late delivery and the fine for failure to return the advance payment upon the first request of the Belarusian company, as well as additional procedural expenses.
