Peru has been declared by USA in default for an unpaid international arbitration award of 91 million dollars, which corresponds to Kuntur Wasiconcessionaire that was in charge of the Chinchero airport.
This was confirmed last week by a US federal judge in a memorandum reported by the Columbia Court.
The document indicates that our country did not present lawyers to defend itself in this court: “Peru never appeared or presented a response,” warned Judge Richard León on December 22.
The same judge confirmed the validity of the arbitration award, which was issued by the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes of the World Bank (ICSID). This represents another setback in terms of losses in arbitrations and US courts that Peruvian entities have suffered in recent years against foreign investors, according to the Bloomberg portal.
The media recalled that a subsidiary of Brookfield Asset Management obtained compensation for US$200 million in arbitrations against the Municipality of Lima, which it has refused to pay despite having been confirmed in US courts.
“Lima alleged that Brookfield operated a toll road concession obtained through bribes. Brookfield has since taken Peru to arbitration, in part due to Lima’s failure to pay, a process that is still pending,” Bloomberg noted.
It should be remembered that Peru granted a concession for the construction of the airport to the Kuntur Wasi consortium (made up of the Peruvian Andino Investment Holding and the Argentine Corporación América) in 2014 and revoked it a few years later, after an arbitration tribunal concluded that its contract had been violated.
Peru lost this arbitration in 2024, 7 years after the origin of this dispute, when the concession contract for the Chinchero Airport was unilaterally resolved by the Ministry of Transport and Communications (MTC).
Said contract, signed in 2014 and modified in 2016 through an addendum, was considered valid by the ICSID arbitration tribunal, which rejected the arguments presented by the MTC and described the termination of the contract as “arbitrary and unjustified.”
As a result, in May 2024, the ICSID issued a unanimous ruling ordering the Peruvian State to compensate Kuntur Wasi with US$91 million.
“Kuntur Wasi has submitted a statement stating that Peru has not yet paid any amounts owed,” added Judge León.
