Name of arbitrator:

LE BARS Benoit

Education, awards and selected publications:

Education:

• Bar Exam Paris

Court of appeal, 1st lawyer in the year

Dec. 1998

• Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne University law school

PhD Private law, with distinction.

Thesis work: « Minority shareholders associations ». Reader Pr Yves Guyon.

Albert Wahl Prize of private law (1999)

Jan. 1998

Awards/Recognitions:

Cauri d’or de l’Intégration – 2015

Benoit Le Bars received at the eleventh annual Cauris d’Or gala held in Dakar, Senegal, the prestigious “Cauri d’Or de l’intégration” prize from  Mr. Sidiki Kaba, Minister of Justice and Chairman of the Assembly of States Parties of the International Criminal Court, in recognition of his commitment to the African continent and his involvement in dispute resolution in Africa.

Chambers Global – 2015 to 2019

• Ranked lawyer in dispute resolution: Africa wide, band 2

GAR 100

• Benoit and his team are listed since 2010

Legal 500 2015-2017 EMEA / Paris – Litigation: International Arbitration

Recognition from French “Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques”, 2012 for the Book Droit du commerce international (First edition)

Selected Publications:

• International Commercial Arbitration: Landmark decisions of French arbitration law

LexisNexis, 2019

• International Arbitration and Corporate Law: An OHADA Practice

Eleven International Publishing, 2013

Countries qualified to practice:

France

Language(s):

• French
• English
• Spanish
• Russian (working knowledge)

Name of law firm or institution:

Lazareff Le Bars

Area(s) of specialisation:

International arbitration (commercial and investment), International commerce law, International company law, OHADA law

Institutional affiliation(s):

• Expert Member of the « Practice and Standards Committee” for the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (CIArb)
• Member of the French ICC Committee of Arbitration (ICC France)
• Member of the International Arbitration Council (CPR)
• Member grade CIArb (The Chartered Institute of Arbitrators) and co-head of the conference program board for 2017
• Founding committee member of the African Arbitration Association
• Admitted on the list of arbitrators for ASA (Swiss Arbitration Association)
• Admitted on the list of arbitrators of the CCJA arbitration institute (Common Court of Arbitration for OHADA law)
• Admitted on the list of arbitrators for Kigali Arbitration Centre
• Member of the European Arbitration Centre (EAC) – Bruxelles/Kiev
• Member of the Centre for Mediation of Paris (CMAP) – nomination on the arbitrators’ list
• Member of the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA)
• Member of the International Arbitration Institute (IAI)
• Member of the French Arbitration Association (AFA)
• Member of the Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC) Panel of Arbitrators
• Admitted on the list of arbitrators of the Romanian arbitration institute
• Admitted on the list of arbitrators of the Kuala Lumpur Regional Centre for Arbitration (KLRCA)

Please provide a brief background of yourself and your experience working on disputes in Africa?

Benoit Le Bars, co-founder and Managing Partner of Lazareff Le Bars, is a recognized expert in international arbitration, with respect to institutional (ICC, ICSID, LCIA, CICA, ECT, CCJA, AFA) and ad hoc (UNCITRAL mainly) arbitral proceedings, international dispute resolution, and disputes in Africa since more than 20 years. His practice focuses principally on commercial and investment arbitration involving complex trade relationships between businesses, investors and States, and spans a broad range of jurisdictions and arbitral institutions (more than 70 countries to date and 43 of them in Africa or the middle-east).

Given your experience in OHADA arbitration law, what do you consider are the challenges to enforcement of arbitral awards under the OHADA regime?

The main challenge to enforcement of arbitral awards under the OHADA regime is the disparity of analysis of the possible grounds for challenge depending on the country where the award is enforced. An effort to train judges in this area can help in the structuring of a common legal approach, with the support of the Court in Abidjan when it plays its role of Supreme court in the region.

What do you consider is the biggest challenge facing international law firms and practitioners working on disputes in Francophone African countries? How do you think this challenge can be tackled?

Still today, the major challenge is the access to the legal information in the countries (laws, other norms and case law). The landscape is very different from one country to another and it takes sometimes, months to get a copy of a judgment. For corporations, the fact that many counties do not use an electronic registry of companies, slows down access to simple elements any investor may need to verify the capacity of the persons he wants to be working with. Efforts really need to be done in this specific area. Private publishers have started to collect case law and data, but we are still at the early stages of this process.

What do you think can be done to make African states more attractive seats?

Sign bilateral or multilateral treaties regarding recognition of judgments and awards and train local judges in order for them to accept a challenge when the international approach of the rule of law clearly allows it. It is key for any State to respect foreign investors as this is the only way also for its investors to be respected abroad, even all over Africa for south-south business.

What advice do you have for young practitioners who see you as their role model?

Any young lawyer has to remember what main business or political leaders say about the way they have succeeded. These leaders always try to learn something new, they read, they write, they question themselves and they share their knowledge with others. This worked for me. I guess it can be efficient for many.