The Gambia has engaged Cherie Blair, the spouse of former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and her legal firm, together with Edi Faal as new counsels to challenge an International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) award. This award mandates the Gambia to pay damages to Swedish and Australian investors over the expropriation of their tiger-prawn farming business.
The dispute centers on the Hanssons’ investments in West African Aquaculture, a black tiger-prawn farming business they acquired in 2000. The couple alleges their business was seized by the Gambian military in 2015 under the orders of then-president Yahya Jammeh, now in exile in Equatorial Guinea.
On Thursday, ICSID registered the Gambia’s application to annul the March award, which granted damages to West African Aquaculture and its owners, Swedish national Kurt Lennart Hansson and his Australian wife Martje Bolt Hansson.
The Gambia’s new application positions Blair, along with her Omnia Strategy partners James Palmer, senior associate Ricardo Gerhard Tuma, and associate Jessica Sblendorio in London, to lead the legal effort.
Initially represented by a team from Mayer Brown’s Paris office, the Gambia has now enlisted Omnia Strategy for its annulment bid, as well as Los Angeles practitioner Edi Faal and Lucas Bastin KC of Essex Court Chambers in London. This team has previously defended the state in unrelated ICSID proceedings.
The investors have retained their original counsel, a team from Steptoe led by partner Christophe Bondy, who took the case from Cooley in 2020.
Counsel for both parties declined to comment.
The investors filed their claim in 2018 under the Gambia’s 2015 Investment and Expropriation Agency Act, marking the only instance this act has been used as the basis for an ICSID claim.
In its final award, a tribunal majority comprising Canadian chair Céline Lévesque and Derains & Gharavi partner Mélanie Van Leeuwen ordered the Gambia to pay 95% of the damages sought by the investors, plus interest. The claimants initially sought US$35 million in damages, though this amount was reduced during arbitration.
The specific grounds for the Gambia’s annulment application have not been disclosed but may relate to a dissenting opinion by the state’s appointee to the tribunal, French arbitrator Pierre Mayer, who disagreed with the majority on both jurisdiction and merits.
