Prague, Feb 12 (CTK) – The company Diag Human has filed another arbitration complaint about the Czech Republic over a frustrated blood plasma deal from the early 1990s, within which it wants to gain roughly one billion dollars from the Czech Republic, daily Lidove noviny (LN) reported on Monday.
The legal complaint arises from an agreement on support for bilateral investments between the Czech Republic and Switzerland.
The Czech Finance Ministry received the complaint in December, its spokesman Michal Zurovec has told the paper.
“In the legal action, Diag Human did not specify the demanded sum, but it said it was not lower than one billion dollars,” Zurovec said.
Based in Liechtenstein, Diag Human has been suing the Czech Republic since the early 1990s, after the Health Ministry put up tender for blood plasma procession and then health minister Martin Bojar labelled the firm Conneco (later Diag Human) “suspicious.”
The arbitration panel then confirmed that the state is to pay Diag Human 327 million crowns for damaging its good name, and the state paid out the money.
Unlike the previous arbitration, in which the firm raised a claim to the Czech Health Ministry, the new action is an investment claim on the basis of an international agreement.
LN writes that the Czech Republic will be represented in the arbitration by the U.S. lawyer’s office Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer, which won a tender for the case.
An arbitration ruling from 2008 adjudged 8.9 billion crowns to Diag Human.
