Anjie Observations On International Commercial Arbitration

Hong Kong Court Re-affirms High Threshold to Prove "Fraud" as the Ground for Not Enforcing Arbitral Award

On 14 March 2016, Hong Kong Court of First Instance (CFI) dismissed an application to set aside an order granting leave to enforce an arbitral award made in Malaysia. (T v C [2016] HCCT 23/2015).

C, the Respondent and debtor of the award, made an application to set aside the order alleging that no binding contract had been entered into between C and T, that there had been fraud and forgery of documents. And thus, it would be contrary to public policy to enforce the Award.

Mimmie Chan J reasoned that the public policy ground should be narrowly construed. Before a Convention jurisdiction could refuse enforcement of a Convention award on public policy grounds, "the award must be so fundamentally offensive to that jurisdiction's notions of justice that, despite its being a party to the convention, it cannot reasonably be expected to overlook the objection"(Hebei