Latest grounds for annulment of the arbitral award in Vietnam

1. Latest grounds for annulment of the arbitral award in Vietnam

According to Article 68 of the Commercial Arbitration Law 2010, the grounds for annulling an arbitration award are as follows:

- The Court considers the annulment of the arbitration award upon request from one party.

- An arbitration award may be annulled under the following circumstances:

+ There is no arbitration agreement or the arbitration agreement is invalid;

+ The composition of the Arbitral Tribunal or the arbitration proceedings do not conform to the agreement of the parties or are contrary to the provisions of the Commercial Arbitration Law 2010;

+ The dispute does not fall within the jurisdiction of the Arbitral Tribunal; if the arbitration award contains matters beyond the jurisdiction of the Arbitral Tribunal, such matters shall be annulled;

+ The evidence provided by the parties on which the Arbitral Tribunal relied to render the award is falsified; if the arbitrator accepts money, property, or other material benefits from one disputing party, affecting the objectivity and fairness of the arbitration award;

+ The arbitration award is contrary to the basic principles of Vietnamese law.

- When the Court considers a request for annulment of an arbitration award, the burden of proof is established as follows:

+ The party requesting annulment of the arbitration award, as stipulated in points a, b, c, and d of clause 2, Article 68 of the Commercial Arbitration Law 2010, bears the burden of proving that the Arbitral Tribunal has rendered an award under one of these circumstances;

+ For a request to annul an arbitration award stipulated in point e of clause 2, Article 68 of the Commercial Arbitration Law 2010, the Court is responsible for actively verifying and gathering evidence to decide whether to annul the arbitration award.

2. Regulations on courts reviewing requests for annulment of arbitration awards in Vietnam

The regulations on courts reviewing requests to annul arbitration awards according to Article 71 of the Commercial Arbitration Law 2010 are as follows:

- Upon receipt of a request to annul an arbitration award, the competent Court must immediately notify the Arbitration Center or Arbitrators of the Arbitral Tribunal handling the case, the disputing parties, and the same-level Procuracy.

- Within 07 working days from the date of acceptance, the Chief Judge of the Court appoints a Panel to review the request, consisting of three Judges, with one Judge acting as the presiding judge as assigned by the Chief Judge of the Court.

Within 30 days from the date of appointment, the Panel must convene a meeting to review the request for annulment of the arbitration award. The Court must transfer the dossier to the same-level Procuracy for review within 07 working days before the date of the meeting to attend the Court’s session on reviewing the request. After this period, the Procuracy must return the dossier to the Court to convene a session to consider the request.

- The session proceeds with the presence of the disputing parties, their lawyers if any, and the Procurator of the same-level Procuracy. If one of the parties requests the deliberation Panel to be absent, or has been duly summoned but fails to attend without a valid reason, or leaves the session without approval from the Panel, the Panel will still proceed to review the request to annul the arbitration decision.

- When reviewing the request, the deliberation Panel relies on the provisions of Article 68 of the Commercial Arbitration Law 2010 and the accompanying documents to consider, decide; they do not retry the content of the dispute that the Arbitral Tribunal has resolved. After considering the request and accompanying documents, hearing opinions of those summoned, if any, the Procurator presents the opinion of the Procuracy, the Panel discusses and decides by majority.

- The review Panel has the right to decide on annulling or not annulling the arbitration award. In cases where the party requesting annulment withdraws the request or has been duly summoned but fails to appear without a valid reason or leaves the session without Panel’s approval, the Panel issues a decision to suspend reviewing the request.

- Within 05 working days from the date of the decision, the Court sends the decision to the parties, the Arbitration Center or Ad-hoc Arbitrator and the same-level Procuracy.

- Upon request from one party and if deemed appropriate, the review Panel may temporarily suspend the resolution of the request for annulment of the arbitration award for no more than 60 days to allow the Arbitral Tribunal to rectify arbitration procedural errors according to the perspective of the Arbitral Tribunal to eliminate the grounds for annulling the arbitration award. The Arbitral Tribunal must inform the Court of its rectification of procedural errors. If the Arbitral Tribunal does not rectify procedural errors, the Panel continues to review the request for annulment.

- In cases where the review Panel decides to annul the arbitration award, the parties may agree again to submit the dispute to Arbitration or one party may sue in Court. If the review Panel does not annul the arbitration award, the arbitration award shall be executed.

- In all cases, the time for dispute resolution at Arbitration, the time for conducting annulment proceedings at the Court is not counted towards the statute of limitations for filing a lawsuit.

- The decision of the Court is final and enforceable.

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