In a recent ruling of the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) Court of Appeal (CA) in Lahela v Lameez, the DIFCCA overturned the DIFC Court of First Instance (CFI)’s ruling in Pearl Petroleum Company Limited & Others v The Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq. It found that Justice Sir Jeremy Cooke, rendering the ruling of the DIFCCFI, wrongly concluded in favour of the strict mandatory application of the service regime under article 6 of the Riyadh Convention. The DIFCCA also confirmed that obligations, whether of service or otherwise, under the Riyadh Convention and by extension under international agreements between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and third-party countries more generally, did not form part of DIFC law to the extent that these dealt with civil and commercial matters and had not expressly been adopted into the domestic body of DIFC law (even despite their wholesale adoption into UAE law). As a result, in circumstances where the courts of a Riyadh Convention country (here the Erbil Court of Republic of Iraq, which like the UAE is a signatory of the Riyadh Convention) fail to effect service on an award debtor in that country in the terms prescribed under the Riyadh Convention, alternative and possibly more effective service options available under the DIFC Court Rules (RDC) (and possibly even dispensation with service altogether) are open to award creditors in order to secure enforcement of their ratified DIFC award.
