Tethyan Copper Company (TCC) has approached a court in the United States for enforcement of US$6 billion penalty imposed on Pakistan

TCC is trying to use the $5.9 billion ICSID penalty to scare the Balochistan government into giving it the Reko Diq project.

In June 2000 the government in power signed a joint venture with Pakistan getting 25% and BHP getting bulk 75%. It was in violation of the internationally established practice of sharing half revenues.

It is astounding that the Supreme Court judgment is being criticised due to an unfair award by the ICSID tribunal against Pakistan when that judgment is completely defensible.

The question for Pakistan now is what lesson can be learned from events that led to the ICSID Tribunal making a $5.9 billion award against the Government of Pakistan.

Pakistan has suffered at the hands of an unaccountable and defective dispute resolution mechanism at the hands of the ICSID, and following the examples of India, South Africa and Brazil, should never have become a part of the ICSID.

Abolishing ISDS won’t solve all of the problems of global economic governance. But it seems a very good place to start.

This is a story of the dodgy deal by a multi national company and then earning massive amount of money through a World Bank institution acting against developing countries.

In the Reko Diq case registered by Tethyan Copper Company, the dollar-starved Pakistan has been slapped a penalty way beyond its reach by the World Bank-sponsored ICSID.

The International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) has declared that the Supreme Court of Pakistan’s judgment in the rental power projects case is ‘arbitrary’.