Saturday, September 8

What to do when a legal opponent doesnt recognise the court, the charges or the country?

An American court yesterday announced that Iran has to pay $2.65 billion in damages for the 1983 Hezbollah suicide bombing of the Marine Barracks in Lebanon which killed 241 people.

But the problem is, Iran does not recognise the court, the country, the charges and did not even bother to defend the case. So what do you do? where are you going to get the Iranian Assets from?

I am sure there are better financial minds than me who can help dig out the assets, but here are some thoughts.

No country is totally isolated, they have to do some trading somewhere. In other words, they have to play some Iranian monies somewhere outside the Iranian firms and Iran to pay for imports or some Iranian monies which are due to Iran which are sitting in some non Iranian bank/company or country.

I wonder whether it is possible to go after these sums of money? So company XYZ in say Germany has operations in USA and is purchasing equipment from or selling equipment to Iran. Now I wonder if company XYZ's assets in USA can be sequestered in lieu of the monies which is legally Iran's?

Worth considering, how about using the Alien Tort Law?

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

No comments: