On
In
The Court's judgment is notable for being the first reported consideration of questions of state immunity in the BVI, and in considering the extent of the Court's jurisdiction in Gécamines for the first time.
The Court held that a series of (serious) failures to properly address the Court on questions of State Immunity and in relation to the procedural privileges afforded to a State on questions of service, should lead to the Registration Order being set aside, and to the Court declaring that it consequently had no jurisdiction over
The Court also held that the jurisdiction recognized by Gécamines could have no application to a company whose shares were traded on an international stock exchange which had its own body of independent shareholders that would be disadvantaged by the expropriation of the assets of the company in which those shareholders have an interest: such a company could never be treated as "assimilated into the State for all purposes". The Court also held that TCC's presentation to the Court at the ex-parte hearing was seriously deficient: principally, by the erroneous implication that the 2020 Act was in force, by TCC's failure to properly articulate the limits of the jurisdiction in Gécamines, its failure to draw the Court's attention to the "strong presumption" that the separate corporate personality of PIA was to be respected, and to the evidence which went to the improbability of a public traded company having "no separate effective existence."
The applications were heard over 4 days in
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