SOEXIMEX SAS V AGROCORP INTERNATIONAL PTE LTD

[2011] EWHC 2743 (Comm), Queen's Bench Division, Commercial Court, Mrs Justice Gloster, 31 October 2011

Arbitration - Serious irregularity - Failure by arbitrators to consider all issues raised before them - Whether award should be remitted - Arbitration Act 1996, section 68(2)(d)

Soeximex, a Bangladeshi company, agreed to buy 15,000 mt of Burmese rice from Agrocorp, a Singaporean company. Payment was to be by an irrevocable letter of credit using a correspondent bank in New York. The buyers defaulted in opening the letter of credit, and the sellers obtained an arbitration award holding them to be in repudiatory breach of the sale agreement. In the arbitration the buyers argued that the contract was unlawful under the US Burmese Sanctions Regulations and also under European Council Regulation 194/2008/EC. The GAFTA Board of Appeal held that neither set of Regulations applied because the buyers were not Burmese. Gloster J held that the award had to be remitted under section 68(2)(d) of the Arbitration Act 1996 (failure by the tribunal to deal with all the issues put to it) in that the Board of Appeal had not taken account of alternative arguments that the contract was void under each set of Regulations irrespective of nationality.