Protecting the interests of a major Korean energy holding company in court

Our client was seeking to recover from its Russian contracting party a four-million dollar debt under agreements for the sale and purchase of products manufactured in Korea. The project continued for more than one year. The primary difficulty was that there was no single document that amounted to a written sale and purchase (or supply) agreement between the parties. Instead, only e-mail correspondence between representatives of the claimant and the defendant was available. Further, the products from Korea were not shipped directly to the claimant, but they were sent to addresses of third parties which the defendant specified in its e-mail requests. The defendant had no formal connection with the recipients of the products. Nevertheless, Pepeliaev Group’s lawyers succeeded in persuading the court that the parties had entered into one-time sale and purchase agreements by exchanging correspondence by e-mail.