Reko Diq, IPPs, Karkey cases: International court fines Pakistan $4b

ISLAMABAD: The airports of 60 countries will bar the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) planes from landing if Pakistan gets behind with paying over $4 billion fine after losing the famous Reco Diq case to an Australian company for extraction of copper and gold in Balochistan.The World Bank’s International Court for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) has fined Pakistan over $4 billion after losing the case.The flights of national flag carrier will not be allowed touchdown until payment of the fine in question on time.The same court had also fined Pakistan $1.2 billion after losing the case to the Turkish power generation company Karkey. The fine is yet to be paid to the company.The company’s ship anchored the Arabian Sea for eight months during the tenure of the then prime minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf but it was not supplied oil for power generation.The ICSID has also imposed a fine of $1 billion on Pakistan in the Independent Power Producers (IPPs) case.A conglomerate of 13 international companies had taken Pakistan to the International Court for Settlement of Investment Disputes that stood trial for several years.The companies took the stand that they made investments in the country’s power sector on sovereign guarantees and supplied billions of rupees worth of power but no payments were made.The total fine in these three cases makes a whopping amount of $4 billion, and if the country pays all these fines then the financial assistance received from Saudi Arabia and the UAE would go towards this end dealing a huge blow to the country’s financial reserves.

from The News International - Top Story http://bit.ly/2SsovWt