An affiliate of Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund that recently won a billion-dollar ICSID award against South Sudan has now filed a new claim against neighbouring Sudan and its central bank.

ICSID registered the claim brought against Sudan by Qatar National Bank on 24 July. 

The bank is using Withers in London and Geneva, as it did in its other ICSID case. Sudan has not yet instructed external counsel.

Details of the claim have not been disclosed, but it relates to debt financing and has been brought under a contract between the parties. 

Qatar National Bank is a Doha-based commercial bank which is 50%-owned by the Qatari Investment Authority. It has branches in 12 states, including Sudan and South Sudan – having opened its branch in the latter shortly after country gained independence from Sudan in 2011 following decades of war. 

According to the bank’s website, its Sudan branch is unable to conduct any banking operations “due to the current situation”. Sudan has been in a state of civil war since April 2023, when two factions of its government began fighting around the capital Khartoum and the western Darfur region.  

In May, Qatar National Bank was awarded more than US$1 billion by an ICSID tribunal chaired by British-Nigerian Ucheora Onwuamaegbu over loans it provided to South Sudan and its central bank during the country’s own civil war. 

The tribunal – which included co-arbitrators Peter Rees KC of 39 Essex Chambers and French academic Hélène Ruiz Fabri – found that South Sudan and the Bank of South Sudan had breached a loan facility agreement and were jointly liable to repay the loan plus interest. 

Withers also represented Qatar National Bank on that claim, alongside Horizon Legal Associates in the South Sudanese capital of Juba.

The newly-registered claim is the only ICSID claim pending against Sudan. In 2020, the state’s first ever ICSID claim was discontinued by agreement of the parties after a Jordanian-Lebanese telecoms investor dropped his case over a wireless internet network. Sudan used Derains & Gharavi in Paris to defend against that claim.

Two years later, proceedings filed by Malaysia’s oil and gas company Petronas against the state at ICSID were also discontinued.

Qatar National Bank (Q.P.S.C) v. Republic of the Sudan and Central Bank of Sudan (ICSID Case No. ARB/24/28)

Counsel to Qatar National Bank