By JIGGSLAW®. Riteve, which is in charge of the technical vehicle inspection in Costa Rica and is owned by the Spanish company, Supervisión and Control S.A., has filed a request for arbitration against Costa Rica for not increasing tariff rates over the last twelve years. It follows an investment arbitration claim filed in 2012 at the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), which demanded the same and was unsuccessful in January 2017.
An arbitration request with the International Conciliation and Arbitration Center (ICAC) of the Costa Rican-American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) has been filed.
According to Costa Rica media (see Pablo Rojas, crhoy.com, 07.07.2022 “Riteve initiates an arbitration against the State: asserting “financial imbalance”), the amount of the claim is unknown, although Riteve claims damages for the failure to increase tariffs rates in 12 years.
Riteve’s contract ends in mid-month.
The previous ICSID arbitration
Spanish Supervision and Control initiated an arbitration proceeding in 2012 at the ICSID, under the Bilateral Investment Treaty between Costa Rica and Spain, claiming more than 261 million in damages due to the failure of the Costa Rican government to adjust the assigned tariffs for the vehicle inspection.
The Tribunal decided that the claim, brought to this arbitration by the mentioned Spanish company, did not meet all the admissibility requirements of the Costa Rica-Spain Bilateral Investment Treaty and considered that legal actions taken by Riteve before a national court and the arbitration shared an essential common aim, intending the same result. So, it made it impossible to hear the same issue in an international proceeding as a national court was looking at it.
