LONDON (Reuters) – A Luxembourg bailiff has ordered several banks to freeze assets held by Ecuador in accounts in the country, over a dispute over a $391 million out-of-court settlement ( 382.17 million euros) which, according to the Anglo-French oil company Perenco, has not been paid.
The Ecuadorian government pledged in June 2021 to honor damages awarded to Perenco by the World Bank’s International Center for Investment Disputes (ICSID), which ruled that Ecuador had unlawfully terminated a production sharing with the company.
“To date, more than a year later, Perenco has still not received a single dollar from Ecuador,” the company said in a statement on Monday, adding that it “will take steps to enforce its rights payable against Ecuador in Luxembourg and other jurisdictions.”
Ecuador’s Ministry of Economy and Energy was not immediately available outside of business hours. Contacted in London and Luxembourg, the law firm Hogan Lovells, Ecuador’s legal adviser on US law, was also unavailable.
A spokesman for the London office of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP, legal counsel to Ecuador’s eurobond manager, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A document seen by Reuters shows that a study by Luxembourg bailiff, Pierre Biel & Geoffrey Galle, on July 28 ordered 122 banking entities operating in Luxembourg to freeze assets in accounts used by Ecuador on behalf of Perenco. A study employee declined to comment, not being authorized to speak to parties not involved in the case.
Reuters could not immediately establish what assets Ecuador held in Luxembourg accounts. Banks named include Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse and HSBC.
Credit Suisse declined to comment, while HSBC and Deutsche Bank did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Perenco sued in Ecuador in 2008 and was awarded $412 million in damages in May last year. The company is to receive $391 million after taking into account the compensation it was ordered to pay Ecuador for environmental damage caused in areas where it operated in Blocks 7 and 21 of the Amazon rainforest.
(Reporting Rowena Edwards and Karin Strohecker in London and Alexandra Valencia in Quito; French version Augustin Turpin, editing by Kate Entringer)
Copyright © 2022 Thomson Reuters