The substantive dispute arose out of a bilingual Russian-English sales contract naming English as the prevailing language in cases of discrepancy. The contract contained an arbitration agreement in favour of the International Commercial Arbitration Court at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation (“ICAC”) with the seat in Moscow. The contract named Russian law as the applicable substantive law, and Russian as the language of arbitration.2 Additionally, the ICAC Rules chosen by the parties provided for Russian as the default language of proceedings, and the ICAC as the body responsible for communicating the statement of claim to the defendant.3

Given this, the ICAC notified the defendant of the commencement of arbitration at the address of the defendant’s office in England. Importantly, the materials sent by the ICAC to the defendant, such as the statement of claim with annexes and a cover letter, were in Russian, except for the fact that the cover letter contained a header in English referring to the ICAC. The defendant ignored these notifications and did not participate in the arbitration.

The final award was rendered in favour of the claimant. At the stage of recognition and enforcement of the award in England, the enforcement defendant argued that the notice of arbitration it had received from the ICAC was not “proper”—within the meaning of s.103(2)(c) of the 1996 Act—since an English translation was absent from the package. Hence the award, the defendant argued, could not be enforced in England.