The Double Relevance of the 'Corporate Veil' in the Yukos PCA Case and the Doctrine of the Abuse of Right

This article deals with a key point of the Yukos dispute decided by the Permanent Court of Arbitration, namely the role of the corporate veil invoked by the Claimants. The Tribunal firstly relied on this legal category in the 2009 interim award, to confirm the fulfillment by the Claimants of the nationality requirement, despite the fact that the claimant companies were controlled by nationals of the respondent State. Then, in the 2014 final award, it used the theory of corporate veil to refuse to consider the early acquisition of Yukos by the same Russian nationals. This doubtful Tribunal’s outcome is compared with a different perspective arising from the system set out by the European Convention of Human Rights and then criticized according to the legal principle prohibiting the abuse of right