Editorial – The Fridman case once again shows the power of money over politics
By Misch Pautsch Switch to German for original article
Whether Mikhail Fridman will pursue his €14 billion lawsuit against Luxembourg remains an open question. But, even if we entirely ignore the specifics of this case, the procedure itself has already shown how vulnerable states are to pressure when investment treaties become weapons against sanctions.
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14 billion euros. You really have to let that sink in. Given that the average monthly income in Luxembourg is 5,600 euros, it would take 208,333 years of non-stop, tax-free work to earn that much. Our brains simply cannot comprehend such figures. Yet on paper, they are frighteningly real. Even a fraction of the damages that Fridman is demanding from Luxembourg for alleged breaches of the Luxembourg-Belgium-Russia Investment Agreement would be devastating for Luxembourg. Currently, it would amount to almost half of what the Luxembourg state spends in a whole year. Yet the consequences are already reaching far beyond the country's borders.
Because regardless of how closely the amount Fridman is demanding corresponds to the "damage suffered", whether and how Luxembourg lobbied to have him removed from the list, or even whether he withdraws the case: This new kind of threat has consequences for all nations in the world that have signed one of the 2,238 investment protection agreements currently in force.
For every time a country or a supranational body imposes sanctions on individuals, the question now arises: will someone try to drag us before an arbitration tribunal over it?
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