Faṣlnāmah-i Pizhūhish-i Huqūq-i Khuṣūṣī (Feb 2020)

Pathology of Foreign Companies' Investment in Iran Legal System: Personality and Nationality of the Companies

  • khalil Rouzegari َAghbolagh,
  • Niavarani Sabber

DOI
https://doi.org/10.22054/jplr.2019.34904.1966
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 8, no. 29
pp. 113 – 134

Abstract

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Foreign investment almost always has been made by legal entities which are recognized as investor in Iran's bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and these treaties extend their protection to them. Paying due attention to provisions of BITs in on hand and certain features of Iran legal system such as old commercial code one may imagine that deficiencies resulted from the features probably cause certain legal problem for presence of the investors in Iran. This library oriented paper seeks to analysis fulfillment of Iran BITs with regard to private legal entities and to identify challenges may be faced by the entities when investing in Iran. It seems that Iran laws and regulations suffer from certain shortcomings which can be resolved by giving priority over provisions of BITs. Investors' concerns as to conformity of their behavior with Iran laws and regulations as a condition for enjoying legal and treaty protections justify the need of conducting such a research. In so doing we will focus on multiplicity of standard of determining nationality of companies, possibility of legal presence of sole-shareholder companies in Iran and the possibility of claim by locally registered companies against Iran in international arbitral tribunals.

Keywords