Akin Gump Scores Major NY Supreme Court Win for Clients in Kazakhstan Litigation

(New York) – (New York) – An Akin Gump team led by litigation practice head Stephen Baldini and partner Paul Butler received a Litigator of the Week Shout Out for representing Daniel Chapman, Argentem Creek Holdings LLC and other Argentem entities as they won a decisive victory in New York Supreme Court.

A N.Y. Supreme Court judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Kazakhstan in 2020 that accused markets investment manager Argentem Creek Partners and Chapman, its CEO and founder, of conspiring with investors to enforce what it called a fraudulent arbitral award of more than half a billion dollars.

The judge, in dismissing the lawsuit, noted that courts in Sweden, the award’s place of issuance, had already rejected Kazakhstan’s arguments that the award was tainted by fraud. The judge said that only the Swedish court has the authority to set aside this award; which was also confirmed by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and confirmed on appeal.

Akin Gump partner Paul Butler, who, with litigation practice head Stephen Baldini, represented Chapman and Argentem, said of the verdict, “Needless to say, we are very pleased that, after hundreds of pages of briefing on the matter, the Court has completely dismissed Kazakhstan's complaint against Argentem and Mr. Chapman and found, as we have argued all along, that their unfounded claims of derivative fraud were merely an unlawful collateral attack on a validly confirmed arbitration award that Kazakhstan has steadfastly refused to pay. We hope this will end Kazakhstan's ill-advised attempts to use U.S. courts to intimidate investors from protecting their fiduciary interests in an award that the Court found was entitled to the full faith and credit of U.S. law.”

Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP is a leading international law firm with more than 900 lawyers in offices throughout the United States, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.