SIMON GABRIEL, in: ASA Bull. 4 / 2011, S. 823 ff.

I. The Problem

A fre­quent prob­lem in inter­na­tion­al arbi­tra­tion is the han­dling of doc­u­ments of which the authen­tic­i­ty or the con­tent is in dis­pute (so-called ​“chal­lenged doc­u­ments”¹).² Dif­fer­ent arbi­tral tri­bunals han­dle the issue in dif­fer­ent ways. The fol­low­ing exam­ples show the wide range of approach­es to the sub­ject:³ 

• In a Swiss Rules arbi­tra­tion in Zurich, a cru­cial agree­ment was chal­lenged to have been coun­ter­feit­ed. When the par­ty rely­ing on the doc­u­ment was unable to pro­duce the orig­i­nal, the arbi­tral tri­bunal com­plete­ly dis­re­gard­ed the (pho­to­copied) doc­u­ment which final­ly decid­ed the case. 
• In a DIS arbi­tra­tion in Berlin, cru­cial con­fir­ma­tion let­ters were chal­lenged to have been coun­ter­feit­ed. The arbi­tral tri­bunal ordered inspec­tion mea­sures to con­firm or dis­prove the authen­tic­i­ty of the document. 
• In an ICC arbi­tra­tion in Gene­va, an agree­ment was alleged to have been back­dat­ed and no orig­i­nal was pro­duced by the oth­er party. 

The arbi­tral tri­bunal did not fur­ther pur­sue the chal­lenge, stat­ing (inter alia) that there was no gen­er­al­ly accept­ed rule in inter­na­tion­al arbi­tra­tion pur­suant to which orig­i­nal doc­u­ments had to be pro­duced in response to a challenge. 

The above three exam­ples illus­trate that there is no gen­er­al­ly accept­ed approach as to how chal­lenged doc­u­ments should be dealt with in inter­na­tion­al arbi­tra­tion. Against this back­ground the present con­tri­bu­tion pro­vides gen­er­al rec­om­men­da­tions on how arbi­tral tri­bunals may wish to address the issue.⁴ 

II. Legal Framework

A. Min­i­mal Stan­dards pur­suant to Swiss lex arbi­tri

1. Right to Be Heard in a Con­tra­dic­to­ry Procedure

It is assumed that the rel­e­vant arbi­tra­tion agree­ments pro­vide for a seat in Switzer­land and thus Swiss lex arbi­tri applies.⁵ Swiss lex arbi­tri in inter­na­tion­al arbi­tra­tions is con­tained in art. 176 et seqq. of the Swiss Pri­vate Inter­na­tion­al Law Act (“PILA”). The issue of chal­lenged doc­u­ments forms part of the larg­er sub­ject of the con­duct of arbi­tral pro­ceed­ings. In this respect art. 182 PILA states: 

“Irre­spec­tive of the rules cho­sen, the arbi­tral tri­bunal in all cas­es has to safe­guard equal treat­ment of the par­ties as well as their right to be heard in a con­tra­dic­to­ry ⁶ pro­ce­dure”.⁷ 

Equal treat­ment of the par­ties and the right to be heard are firm prin­ci­ples in Swiss inter­na­tion­al arbi­tra­tion and any infringe­ment may lead to annul­ment of the arbi­tral award.⁸ Fur­ther­more, the said prin­ci­ples are wide­ly accept­ed in inter­na­tion­al arbi­tra­tion and imple­ment­ed in most arbi­tra­tion laws by virtue of the UNCI­TRAL Mod­el Law on Inter­na­tion­al Com­mer­cial Arbi­tra­tion (“Mod­el Law”) and the New York Con­ven­tion on the Recog­ni­tion and Enforce­ment of For­eign Arbi­tral Awards (“NY Con­ven­tion”).⁹ In the con­text of the present arti­cle, the right to be heard is of par­tic­u­lar relevance. 

Under Swiss lex arbi­tri the Swiss Fed­er­al Tri­bunal¹⁰ has found with respect to the right to be heard: 

“It [the right to be heard] is vio­lat­ed if, by inad­ver­tence or mis­un­der­stand­ing, the arbi­tral tri­bunal fails to con­sid­er alle­ga­tions, argu­ments, evi­dence and offers of proof pre­sent­ed by a par­ty which are impor­tant for the deci­sion to be made […]”.¹¹ 

The prin­ci­ple of con­tra­dic­to­ry pro­ce­dure, which is also stip­u­lat­ed in art. 182 PILA, has been defined by the Swiss Fed­er­al Tri­bunal as follows: 

“By con­tra­dic­to­ry pro­ce­dure every par­ty shall be enabled to review, com­ment and attempt to dis­prove the sub­mis­sions of the coun­ter­par­ty by way of prop­er sub­mis­sions and evi­dence”.¹² 

Hence, from a manda­to­ry Swiss lex arbi­tri per­spec­tive, the lim­its for the con­duct of pro­ceed­ings on the tak­ing of evi­dence are: (i) equal treat­ment of the par­ties, (ii) the right to be heard and (iii) the form of the con­tra­dic­to­ry pro­ce­dure.¹³ 

2. Onus of Sub­stan­ti­a­tion and Bur­den of Proof

Close­ly con­nect­ed with the right to be heard is the par­ties’ onus of sub­stan­ti­a­tion. The onus of sub­stan­ti­a­tion requires each par­ty to sub­mit facts in suf­fi­cient detail to allow the appli­ca­tion of sub­stan­tive law.¹⁴ In par­tic­u­lar, the Swiss Fed­er­al Tri­bunal has held: 

“As the appli­cant (respon­dent in the arbi­tral pro­ceed­ings) in spite of repeat­ed invi­ta­tion failed to meet its pro­ce­dur­al onus of sub­stan­ti­a­tion, the arbi­tral tri­bunal did not infringe the right to be heard when it relied upon the cal­cu­la­tion of dam­ages pur­suant to the sub­mis­sions of the claimant in the arbi­tral pro­ceed­ings.​”¹⁵ 

The find­ings of the Swiss Fed­er­al Tri­bunal imply e con­trario that if (i) the respon­dent had met the onus of sub­stan­ti­a­tion and (ii) the arbi­tral tri­bunal had only relied upon the sub­mis­sions of claimant, it might have infringed respondent’s right to be heard. This could in turn have led to the annul­ment of the award.¹⁶ 

Con­se­quent­ly, an arbi­tral tri­bunal has to apply the sub­stan­tive law and ren­der a deci­sion on the authen­tic­i­ty of rel­e­vant doc­u­ments, if (i) a par­ty alleges a duly sub­stan­ti­at­ed set of facts and (ii) the coun­ter­par­ty dis­putes these facts in a duly sub­stan­ti­at­ed man­ner. If nei­ther par­ty estab­lish­es proof for its alle­ga­tions, the bur­den of proof rule applies.¹⁷ 

B. Rel­e­vant Pro­vi­sions in Com­mon Arbi­tra­tion Rules

The most com­mon insti­tu­tion­al arbi­tra­tion rules in Con­ti­nen­tal Europe do not specif­i­cal­ly address the issue of chal­lenged doc­u­ments. Usu­al­ly, the prin­ci­ples of the right to be heard¹⁸ and equal treat­ment¹⁹ are pro­vid­ed for as well as the arbi­tral tribunal’s gen­er­al dis­cre­tion to ade­quate­ly take the evi­dence with­in these lim­its²⁰. Some arbi­tra­tion rules express­ly stip­u­late a pro­vi­sion regard­ing bur­den of proof.²¹ 

C. Rel­e­vant Pro­vi­sions in the IBA Rules

Gen­er­al stan­dards such as the IBA Rules for the Tak­ing of Evi­dence in Inter­na­tion­al Arbi­tra­tion (2010 edi­tion; ​“IBA Rules”) are reg­u­lar­ly applied as guide­lines by way of ref­er­ence in the ​“terms of ref­er­ence” or in the pro­ce­dur­al rules ordered by an arbi­tral tribunal. 

The IBA Rules pro­vide that ​“copies of doc­u­ments shall con­form to the orig­i­nals and, at the request of the arbi­tral tri­bunal, any orig­i­nal shall be pre­sent­ed for inspec­tion”.²² 

Pur­suant to the Com­men­tary on art. 3.12 of the IBA Rules, ​“the arbi­tral tri­bunal may request the pro­duc­tion of an orig­i­nal doc­u­ment at any time, so if a par­ty believes that a copy does not ful­ly con­form to the orig­i­nal doc­u­ment, it may ask the arbi­tral tri­bunal to require the pro­duc­tion of that orig­i­nal”.²³ This includes cas­es where a par­ty believes that no authen­tic doc­u­ment exists at all as this would qual­i­fy as com­pre­hen­sive non-conformity. 

Hence, under the IBA Rules an arbi­tral tri­bunal has the right but not a duty to request pro­duc­tion of an orig­i­nal for inspec­tion by the tri­bunal.²⁴ 

D. Rel­e­vant Issues Referred to in Arbi­tra­tion Cas­es and Legal Doctrine

Avail­able deci­sions of arbi­tra­tion cas­es and rel­e­vant legal doc­trine in inter­na­tion­al arbi­tra­tion do not estab­lish a com­pre­hen­sive con­cept, rule or prac­tice as to how an arbi­tral tri­bunal should in gen­er­al deal with sit­u­a­tions of chal­lenged doc­u­ments.²⁵ Nev­er­the­less, ref­er­ence to par­tic­u­lar issues is help­ful in expand­ing the present analysis: 

Com­pe­tence: It is main­tained by lead­ing com­men­ta­tors and con­firmed in arbi­tral awards that arbi­tral tri­bunals are com­pe­tent to decide upon authen­tic­i­ty issues.²⁶ Arbi­tral tri­bunals are usu­al­ly not under an oblig­a­tion to refer the par­ties to penal courts.²⁷ 

Bur­den of proof and sub­stan­ti­a­tion: In line with the con­sid­er­a­tions on Swiss lex arbi­tri ²⁸, lead­ing com­men­ta­tors in inter­na­tion­al arbi­tra­tion con­firm that the authen­tic­i­ty of doc­u­ments must be proven by the par­ty rely­ing on the doc­u­ments²⁹ (e.g. by sub­mis­sion of the orig­i­nal), if there are suf­fi­cient rea­sons to doubt such authen­tic­i­ty.³⁰ 

Means of Evi­dence: Irre­spec­tive of a ref­er­ence to the IBA Rules in a pro­ce­dur­al order, it is main­tained by legal schol­ars that arbi­tral tri­bunals are enti­tled to request pre­sen­ta­tion of orig­i­nal doc­u­ments for inspec­tion by the arbi­tral tri­bunal.³¹ 

Stan­dard of proof for fraud: The rel­e­vant stan­dard of proof with respect to alleged fraud (e.g. forgery of an orig­i­nal doc­u­ment) was addressed by a sole arbi­tra­tor in Gene­va in a pre­lim­i­nary award in ICC arbi­tra­tion dat­ed 9 Octo­ber 2008. The sole arbi­tra­tor found that a high stan­dard of proof must be applied for alle­ga­tions of forgery.³² 

Legal Con­se­quence: Some authors argue that in cas­es of unproven authen­tic­i­ty the chal­lenged doc­u­ment should not be relied upon.³³ 

E. Pre­lim­i­nary Conclusion

Con­sid­er­ing the require­ments of (i) the right to be heard, (ii) the onus of sub­stan­ti­a­tion, (iii) con­tra­dic­to­ry pro­ceed­ings under Swiss lex arbi­tri and the referred lit­er­a­ture and arbi­tra­tion cas­es, a two-step-approach can be rec­om­mend­ed in cas­es of chal­lenged doc­u­ments. The fol­low­ing fac­tu­al back­ground is here­by assumed: ​“Claimant” pleads a set of facts and sub­mits the pho­to­copy of a doc­u­ment as evi­dence. ​“Respon­dent” does not only dis­pute the plead­ed facts, but fur­ther­more in a sub­stan­ti­at­ed way chal­lenges the fact that an orig­i­nal doc­u­ment exists which (i) is sim­i­lar to the sub­mit­ted pho­to­copy and/​or (ii) orig­i­nates from the alleged signatories. 

Step one: The arbi­tral tri­bunal deter­mines whether (i) the chal­lenged doc­u­ment is rel­e­vant for the out­come of the case and (ii) the chal­lenge of the doc­u­ment is suf­fi­cient­ly sub­stan­ti­at­ed. If both require­ments are met, the arbi­tral tri­bunal must pro­ceed to step two (i.e. take evi­dence on the authen­tic­i­ty of the dis­put­ed doc­u­ment and make a deci­sion).³⁴ If either of said require­ments is not met, the arbi­tral tri­bunal does not have to (but still may) inves­ti­gate fur­ther into the authen­tic­i­ty issue. 

Step two: If the arbi­tral tri­bunal decides on fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tion, it has to con­sid­er appro­pri­ate means of evi­dence and make a deci­sion. This will usu­al­ly entail inspec­tion of the orig­i­nal doc­u­ment and tes­ti­mo­ny of wit­ness­es regard­ing the authen­tic­i­ty of the doc­u­ment. Pre­sen­ta­tion of the orig­i­nal doc­u­ment usu­al­ly estab­lish­es suf­fi­cient proof (“voller Beweis”) for the authen­tic­i­ty of that doc­u­ment. If Respon­dent upholds its authen­tic­i­ty chal­lenge irre­spec­tive of the pro­duc­tion of the orig­i­nal, Respon­dent bears the bur­den of proof for a forgery which would dis­qual­i­fy the proof estab­lished by the pre­sen­ta­tion of the orig­i­nal doc­u­ment (“Gegen­be­weis”). 

After the tak­ing of the evi­dence there are three poten­tial outcomes: 

(i) No par­ty, includ­ing the Claimant, has dis­charged its bur­den of proof. It fol­lows that the chal­lenged doc­u­ment must not be relied upon. (ii) Claimant has estab­lished full proof of authen­tic­i­ty (e.g. by pre­sen­ta­tion of the orig­i­nal doc­u­ment). Hence, the doc­u­ment may be relied upon. (iii) Respon­dent has been suc­cess­ful in estab­lish­ing proof of forgery. Con­se­quent­ly, the doc­u­ment must not be relied upon.³⁵ 

III. Par­tic­u­lar Pro­ce­dur­al Problems

A. Sub­stan­ti­at­ed Chal­lenge of Documents

1. Spe­cif­ic Cir­cum­stances Giv­ing Rise to Rea­son­able Doubts in General

The two-step-approach for arbi­tral tri­bunals as rec­om­mend­ed in the pre­lim­i­nary con­clu­sion here­in above, is very sim­i­lar to the rule of the recent Swiss Civ­il Pro­ce­dure Act (“CPA”) which pro­vides in art. 178 relat­ing to State court proceedings: 

“The par­ty rely­ing upon a doc­u­ment must prove its authen­tic­i­ty, if the authen­tic­i­ty is chal­lenged by the coun­ter­par­ty; the chal­lenge must be suf­fi­cient­ly sub­stan­ti­at­ed. ” (Infor­mal trans­la­tion) Even though pro­ce­dur­al rules designed for state court pro­ceed­ings are not nec­es­sar­i­ly suit­able for arbi­tra­tion pro­ceed­ings, the sim­i­lar­i­ty of the con­cepts found under Swiss lex arbi­tri and in the CPA jus­ti­fy ref­er­ence to the con­sid­er­a­tions behind art. 178 CPA. Specif­i­cal­ly, these con­sid­er­a­tions may be help­ful to estab­lish guide­lines for the degree of suf­fi­cient sub­stan­ti­a­tion when chal­leng­ing a document. 

The Con­sid­er­a­tions of the Swiss Fed­er­al Coun­cil (“Botschaft des Bun­desrats”) to art. 178 CPA provide: 

“How­ev­er, the coun­ter­par­ty may not con­fine itself to mere­ly dis­put­ing authen­tic­i­ty in gen­er­al. Rather, it must sub­mit spe­cif­ic cir­cum­stances which give rise to rea­son­able doubts of the court with respect to the authen­tic­i­ty of the doc­u­ment”.³⁶ 

Hence, if ​“spe­cif­ic cir­cum­stances which give rise to rea­son­able doubts” are plead­ed with respect to an authen­tic­i­ty issue, the chal­lenge is to be con­sid­ered suf­fi­cient­ly sub­stan­ti­at­ed. The next step is thus to analyse those cir­cum­stances which are gen­er­al­ly held suf­fi­cient to raise rea­son­able doubts. 

2. Spe­cif­ic Cir­cum­stances Con­sid­ered in Arbi­tra­tion Cases

For the pur­pose of estab­lish­ing cat­e­gories of cir­cum­stances which usu­al­ly qual­i­fy as giv­ing rise to rea­son­able doubts on the authen­tic­i­ty of a doc­u­ment, two pub­licly avail­able arbi­tra­tion cas­es address­ing the issue pro­vide some guidance. 

In the invest­ment arbi­tra­tion case Europe Cement Invest­ment & Trade SA v. Repub­lic of Turkey ³⁷ claimant alleged a trans­fer of shares which was evi­denced by copies of a share trans­fer agree­ment and copies of bear­er shares.³⁸ Respon­dent chal­lenged the authen­tic­i­ty of said doc­u­men­ta­tion.³⁹ 

When address­ing the issue the arbi­tral tri­bunal con­sid­ered the fol­low­ing cir­cum­stances in par­tic­u­lar as poten­tial indi­ca­tions for lack of authenticity: 

• Claimant was not in a posi­tion to pro­duce the orig­i­nals of the chal­lenged doc­u­ments.⁴⁰ 
• Even though the lan­guage of the agree­ment pro­vid­ed that it was exe­cut­ed in a Turk­ish and a Pol­ish ver­sion, only one of the ver­sions was avail­able.⁴¹ 
• No ​“paper trail” could be demon­strat­ed with respect to the rel­e­vant trans­ac­tion.⁴² 
• There was no men­tion of the trans­ac­tion in the finan­cial state­ments of claimant.⁴³ 
• The alleged trans­ac­tion was con­sid­ered to be ​“eco­nom­ic non­sense”.⁴⁴ 
• Claimant failed to pro­vide a seri­ous rebut­tal to respondent’s argu­ments.⁴⁵ 

Based on these find­ings the arbi­tral tri­bunal concluded: 

“[…] the cir­cum­stances of this case as out­lined above give rise to a strong infer­ence that there was no trans­fer of shares […]. This car­ries with it the clear impli­ca­tion that the claim to share own­er­ship was based on inau­then­tic doc­u­ments and that the claim was fraud­u­lent.”⁴⁶ 

The arbi­tral tri­bunal dis­missed the claim on the basis that it had no juris­dic­tion.⁴⁷ 

In an ICC arbi­tra­tion in Gene­va, claimant chal­lenged the authen­tic­i­ty of an amend­ment agree­ment pro­duced by respon­dent. The amend­ment agree­ment con­tained amongst oth­ers an arbi­tra­tion agree­ment that dif­fered from the one in the orig­i­nal agree­ment on which claimant relied.⁴⁸ Even though respon­dent was able to pro­duce the orig­i­nal, claimant fur­ther pur­sued its chal­lenge and endeav­oured to prove forgery.⁴⁹ Claimant sub­mit­ted that a per­son in respondent’s organ­i­sa­tion had stolen pre-signed and stamped sheets of claimant’s cor­po­rate sta­tion­ary dur­ing a vis­it in claimant’s premis­es. When con­sid­er­ing whether a forgery had been estab­lished the sole arbi­tra­tor took into account var­i­ous cir­cum­stances, including: 

• The claimant’s main wit­ness, an alleged sig­na­to­ry of the amend­ment agree­ment, failed to appear at the wit­ness hear­ing.⁵⁰ 
• A foren­sic expert report con­firmed that the doc­u­ment in ques­tion was prob­a­bly com­posed of authen­tic ele­ments.⁵¹ 
• The appli­ca­tion of an alleged­ly out-dat­ed cor­po­rate seal on the doc­u­ment.⁵² 
• The cir­cum­stances of the rel­e­vant sig­na­tures: the name of one sig­na­to­ry con­tained a typo­graph­i­cal error and the oth­er sig­na­to­ry was no longer employed by the par­ty in ques­tion when the amend­ment agree­ment was alleged­ly exe­cut­ed.⁵³ 
• The alleged­ly unusu­al for­mat of the amend­ment agree­ment (e.g. unusu­al use of claimant’s let­ter­head for an agree­ment).⁵⁴ 

The sole arbi­tra­tor con­sid­ered these ele­ments as suf­fi­cient to inves­ti­gate into the issue of the authen­tic­i­ty of the amend­ment agree­ment and make a deci­sion. After detailed con­sid­er­a­tion of each indi­ca­tion sub­mit­ted by claimant, the sole arbi­tra­tor concluded: 

“How­ev­er, it is not for me to spec­u­late, but rather for the Claimant to prove its case of alleged fraud. […]
In con­clu­sion, it can­not be exclud­ed in light of the record that the events the Claimant alleges may have occurred. How­ev­er, there is insuf­fi­cient evi­dence that they actu­al­ly did occur.” ⁵⁵

Con­se­quent­ly, for lack of evi­dence that an orig­i­nal doc­u­ment was a forgery, the sole arbi­tra­tor decid­ed to rely upon the document. 

3. Cat­e­gories of Spe­cif­ic Cir­cum­stances that give Rise to Rea­son­able Doubts

Based upon the con­sid­er­a­tions in the above sum­ma­rized cas­es and fur­ther expe­ri­ence from arbi­tra­tion cas­es which are not pub­licly avail­able, it can be con­clud­ed that the fol­low­ing cat­e­gories of cir­cum­stances in par­tic­u­lar may raise rea­son­able doubts on a document’s authen­tic­i­ty: (i) unusu­al for­mat of a doc­u­ment;⁵⁶ (ii) no ​“paper trail”;⁵⁷ (iii) absence of wit­ness­es hav­ing knowl­edge of the exis­tence of a doc­u­ment;⁵⁸ (iv) anachro­nisms: infor­ma­tion in the doc­u­ment was not avail­able at the time when it was alleged­ly cre­at­ed;⁵⁹ (v) lack of a rea­son­able eco­nom­ic back­ground; ⁶⁰ (vi) dis­crep­an­cy from an estab­lished pat­tern;⁶¹ (vii) any foren­sic traces of forgery.⁶² 

It goes with­out say­ing that whether or not a chal­lenge is suf­fi­cient­ly sub­stan­ti­at­ed strong­ly depends on the cir­cum­stances of each indi­vid­ual case. 

At the same time it is rec­om­mend­ed that a cau­tious arbi­tral tri­bunal may want to apply the fol­low­ing rule of thumb: if at least two of the above men­tioned fac­tors are plead­ed and indeed apply to a chal­lenged doc­u­ment, this should be suf­fi­cient to raise rea­son­able doubts and the authen­tic­i­ty issue should thus be con­sid­ered by the tri­bunal.⁶³ The mere fact that the issue of authen­tic­i­ty is estab­lished should, how­ev­er, in no way prej­u­dice the sub­se­quent sub­stan­tive analy­sis of the said issue. 

B. Inspec­tion of Originals

If an arbi­tral tri­bunal finds that a chal­lenge is suf­fi­cient­ly sub­stan­ti­at­ed, in the sense that it has giv­en rise to rea­son­able doubts on the authen­tic­i­ty of a doc­u­ment, it will usu­al­ly order pro­duc­tion of the orig­i­nal doc­u­ment for inspec­tion.⁶⁴ 

As already men­tioned above, the IBA Rules pro­vide that ​“copies of doc­u­ments shall con­form to the orig­i­nals and, at the request of the arbi­tral tri­bunal, any orig­i­nal shall be pre­sent­ed for inspec­tion”.⁶⁵ Nei­ther the IBA Rules, the Com­men­tary of the Work­ing Group, nor the per­ti­nent legal doc­trine spec­i­fies to whom the orig­i­nal should be pre­sent­ed.⁶⁶ 

On this point dif­fer­ent inter­ests are at stake: first, the par­ty pro­duc­ing the orig­i­nal has a valid inter­est that the doc­u­ment is not deliv­ered to the coun­ter­par­ty, since the doc­u­ment could be dam­aged, lost, exchanged or mal­treat­ed. Sec­ond, the chal­leng­ing par­ty has a valid inter­est in con­duct­ing a foren­sic exam­i­na­tion of the doc­u­ment includ­ing as the case may be through an inde­pen­dent expert. These valid inter­ests can be rec­on­ciled if the arbi­tral tri­bunal appoints an inde­pen­dent foren­sic expert who per­forms the exam­i­na­tion, if request­ed, in the pres­ence of par­ty representatives. 

C. Con­se­quences of a Fail­ure to Meet the Bur­den of Proof

The next ques­tion relates to the legal con­se­quences if a par­ty fails to pro­vide suf­fi­cient proof of the authen­tic­i­ty of the chal­lenged doc­u­ment or the coun­ter­par­ty proves forgery. 

Regard­ing the legal con­se­quence of unproven authen­tic­i­ty, it is right­ly main­tained by cer­tain lead­ing authors that the chal­lenged doc­u­ment should not be relied upon in the pro­ceed­ings.⁶⁷ How­ev­er, the alleged fact, for which the inau­then­tic doc­u­ment was sub­mit­ted as evi­dence, may still be true and proven by oth­er means of evi­dence.⁶⁸ 

Fur­ther­more, the ques­tion may arise as to whether the mere dis­re­gard of a chal­lenged doc­u­ment is an ade­quate con­se­quence, if a forgery is estab­lished or a doc­u­ment is with­drawn after a well-rea­soned chal­lenge. In the Inter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice case ​“Mar­itime Delim­i­na­tion and Ter­ri­to­r­i­al Ques­tions between Qatar and Bahrain” the court was con­front­ed with a chal­lenge of 82 doc­u­ments sub­mit­ted by Qatar and dif­fer­ent expert opin­ions in this respect.⁶⁹ Lat­er in the pro­ceed­ings, fol­low­ing alle­ga­tions and evi­dence of poten­tial forgery by Bahrain, Qatar with­drew the entire doc­u­men­ta­tion. The court there­upon decid­ed the case with­out con­sid­er­ing the with­drawn documents. 

This way of pro­ceed­ing was crit­i­cized in a sep­a­rate opin­ion ren­dered by Yves Forti­er⁷⁰, for whom a dis­re­gard of the with­drawn doc­u­ments was not suf­fi­cient as a con­se­quence vis-à-vis Qatar.⁷¹ 

With­out express­ing an opin­ion on this par­tic­u­lar case, it can cer­tain­ly be argued that an adverse infer­ence from a with­drawn or inau­then­tic doc­u­ment on the valid­i­ty of the entire case of a par­ty should only be applied in very excep­tion­al cir­cum­stances, as the alleged facts may, nev­er­the­less, be true.⁷² 

Final­ly, it is wide­ly acknowl­edged in Swiss inter­na­tion­al arbi­tra­tion that an arbi­tral tri­bunal enjoys con­sid­er­able dis­cre­tion when assess­ing the evi­dence and par­tic­u­lar­ly also when assess­ing the cred­i­bil­i­ty of wit­ness­es.⁷³ In con­nec­tion with a with­draw­al of chal­lenged doc­u­ments or even proof of a forgery an arbi­tral tri­bunal may find it ade­quate to con­sid­er these cir­cum­stances when weigh­ing the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the respon­si­ble per­son (e.g. as wit­ness). Such a way of pro­ceed­ing appears to be with­in the dis­cre­tion of an arbi­tral tri­bunal.⁷⁴ 

D. Chal­lenged Arbi­tra­tion Agreements

An addi­tion­al com­pli­ca­tion occurs if the arbi­tra­tion agree­ment forms part of a chal­lenged doc­u­ment. The ques­tion aris­es whether an arbi­tral tri­bunal can have juris­dic­tion based on an alleged­ly unau­then­tic arbi­tra­tion agreement: 

Pur­suant to art. 178 para. 3 PILA, the valid­i­ty of an arbi­tra­tion agree­ment may not be con­test­ed on the grounds that the main con­tract is invalid (prin­ci­ple of ​“sep­a­ra­bil­i­ty of the arbi­tra­tion agree­ment”).⁷⁵ On the oth­er hand, the main con­tract may suf­fer from defects which also affect the arbi­tra­tion agree­ment (so-called ​“iden­ti­ty of defects”).⁷⁶ For exam­ple: An agent con­cludes a main con­tract includ­ing an arbi­tra­tion agree­ment in the name of a prin­ci­pal with­out any author­i­ty in either respect.⁷⁷ As the agent is nei­ther autho­rized to con­clude the main con­tract, nor the arbi­tra­tion agree­ment the lack of his autho­riza­tion affects both agree­ments in ques­tion.⁷⁸ 

The case of an alleged­ly forged main con­tract con­tain­ing an arbi­tra­tion agree­ment is very sim­i­lar to the case of the alleged­ly unau­tho­rized agent. The forg­er con­ceals its lack of author­i­ty to rep­re­sent a third par­ty by pre­tend­ing that the third par­ty itself was the sig­na­to­ry. As the forg­er obvi­ous­ly has no author­i­ty to sign on behalf of the third par­ty this defect affects the entire doc­u­ment includ­ing a poten­tial arbi­tra­tion agree­ment. Hence, the ques­tion is whether this should affect the arbi­tral tribunal’s jurisdiction. 

Pur­suant to art. 186 para. 1 PILA, the arbi­tral tri­bunal shall rule on its own juris­dic­tion (prin­ci­ple of ​“com­pe­tence-com­pe­tence”).⁷⁹ The Swiss Fed­er­al Tri­bunal has held that a state court or an arbi­tral tri­bunal which has been con­cerned with a mat­ter is com­pe­tent to decide upon its own com­pe­tence.⁸⁰ This is also true in cas­es of ​“iden­ti­ty of defects” and thus also in cas­es akin to that of the alleged­ly unau­tho­rized agent or of forgery alle­ga­tions affect­ing the arbi­tra­tion agree­ment.⁸¹ 

In inter­na­tion­al arbi­tra­tion, there are also prac­ti­cal rea­sons to accept the arbi­tral tribunal’s com­pe­tence-com­pe­tence even in cas­es of an alleged forgery of the arbi­tra­tion agree­ment: A dif­fer­ent approach would open the door for respon­dents to effec­tive­ly obstruct arbi­tra­tion pro­ceed­ings by mere­ly alleg­ing a forgery of the arbi­tra­tion agree­ment which then would force claimant to have its agree­ment ver­i­fied by state courts. Depend­ing on the juris­dic­tions involved this might be a time-con­sum­ing and cost­ly or even an impos­si­ble ven­ture.⁸² 

It fol­lows that if an arbi­tral tri­bunal is con­cerned with the issue of its juris­dic­tion, it is com­pe­tent to make a deci­sion in this respect, even if a forgery of the arbi­tra­tion agree­ment has been alleged. The above-pro­posed two-step-test⁸³ may also be applied when the tribunal’s juris­dic­tion is at issue.⁸⁴ 

IV. Conclusion

In con­clu­sion, it is rec­om­mend­ed that arbi­tral tri­bunals, when faced with a chal­lenged doc­u­ment, pro­ceed as follows: 

Step one: the arbi­tral tri­bunal deter­mines whether (i) the chal­lenged doc­u­ment is rel­e­vant to the out­come of the case and (ii) the chal­lenge of the doc­u­ment is suf­fi­cient­ly sub­stan­ti­at­ed to raise doubts as to its authenticity. 

Rel­e­vance is deter­mined based on the facts of each indi­vid­ual case. Suf­fi­cient sub­stan­ti­a­tion may be assessed by con­sid­er­a­tion of the fre­quent char­ac­ter­is­tics of inau­then­tic doc­u­ments as set out here­in above.⁸⁵ 

Step two: If both require­ments of step one are met (rel­e­vance of the doc­u­ment and suf­fi­cient sub­stan­ti­a­tion of the chal­lenge), the arbi­tral tri­bunal takes evi­dence on the authen­tic­i­ty of the dis­put­ed doc­u­ment and – fol­low­ing the applic­a­ble bur­den of proof rule – makes a deci­sion. An inspec­tion of the orig­i­nal doc­u­ment is per­formed under the con­trol of the arbi­tral tri­bunal, e.g. through an inde­pen­dent expert, rather than by pro­duc­tion to the counterparty. 

After the tak­ing of evi­dence there are three poten­tial out­comes: (i) If no par­ty has dis­charged its bur­den of proof, the chal­lenged doc­u­ment must not be relied upon (when apply­ing the Swiss bur­den of proof rule). (ii) If the par­ty sub­mit­ting the chal­lenged doc­u­ment estab­lished full proof of authen­tic­i­ty, the doc­u­ment may be relied upon. (iii) If the chal­leng­ing par­ty is suc­cess­ful in estab­lish­ing proof of a forgery, the doc­u­ment must not be relied upon. 

Footnotes

1. Also referred to as ​“ques­tioned doc­u­ments”; see KOP­PEN­HAVER, Attor­neys Guide to Doc­u­ment Exam­i­na­tion, West­port 2002 for the fol­low­ing def­i­n­i­tion: ​“A ques­tioned doc­u­ment is a doc­u­ment whose ori­gin or con­tent is in dis­pute.” In this arti­cle referred to as ​“chal­lenged doc­u­ments” for doc­u­ments of which the authen­tic­i­ty or con­tent is chal­lenged in arbi­tral proceedings. 
2. The author of the present con­tri­bu­tion act­ed and cur­rent­ly acts as coun­sel for par­ties chal­leng­ing cer­tain doc­u­ments and also for par­ties rely­ing on doc­u­ments chal­lenged by the counterparty. 
3. For rea­sons of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty the author is not in a posi­tion to elab­o­rate fur­ther on these cases. 
4. Poten­tial impli­ca­tions of crim­i­nal law are not con­sid­ered in the present con­tri­bu­tion. For fur­ther infor­ma­tion with respect to fraud in court pro­ceed­ings, see Pub­lished Deci­sion of the Swiss Fed­er­al Tri­bunal (“DFT”) 122 IV 197. With respect to a revi­sion of an arbi­tral award due to fraud­u­lent behav­iour, see deci­sion of the Swiss Fed­er­al Tri­bunal BGer 4A_596/2008 (sum­ma­ry and com­ment by MRAZ, ius.focus 2009/02, sec­tion inter­na­tion­al pri­vate law, LugÜ, arbitration). 
5. See BERG­ER/KELLERHALS, Inter­na­tion­al and Domes­tic Arbi­tra­tion in Switzer­land, 2^nd ed., Lon­don 2010, sec. 689. 
6. In Ger­man ​“kon­tradik­torisch” which is some­times also trans­lat­ed to ​“adver­sar­i­al”. 
7. See art. 182 para. 3 PILA (infor­mal trans­la­tion, empha­sis added). 
8. See art. 190 para. 2 lit. d PILA; BERTI/SCHNYDER in: Hon­sell et al. (ed.), Basle Com­men­tary on Inter­na­tion­al Pri­vate Law, 2^nd ed., Basle 2007, sec. 59 et seqq. to Art. 190 PILA (with fur­ther reference). 
9. See art. 18 Mod­el Law; Art. V lit. b NY Con­ven­tion which allows refusal of an arbi­tral award if a par­ty was ​“unable to present its case”. 
10. The high­est court in Switzer­land, in Ger­man: ​“Bun­des­gericht”. 
11. See DFT 133 III 235, sec. 5.2 (trans­la­tion by BERG­ER/KELLERHALS, (FN 5), sec. 1586a). 
12. See DFT 116 II 639, sec. 4.c (infor­mal trans­la­tion); also SCHNEI­DER in: Hon­sell et al. (ed.), Basle Com­men­tary on Inter­na­tion­al Pri­vate Law, 2^nd ed., Basle 2007, sec. 59 et seqq. to Art. 182 PILA (with fur­ther reference). 
13. See SCHNEI­DER, (FN 12), sec. 2 to Art. 184 PILA. 
14. See SCHNEI­DER, (FN 12), sec. 9 to Art. 184 PILA (with fur­ther ref­er­ence). It is the author’s view that ref­er­ence to evi­dence on file in suf­fi­cient detail also forms part of the par­ties’ onus of substantiation. 
15. See deci­sion of the Swiss Fed­er­al Tri­bunal dat­ed 17 August 1994 in: ASA Bul­letin 2/1995, p. 198 (infor­mal trans­la­tion, empha­sis in the original). 
16. See art. 190 para. 2 lit. d PILA. 
17. The bur­den of proof rule forms part of Swiss sub­stan­tive law and is gov­erned by art. 8 Swiss Civ­il Code (“CC”; see SCHNEI­DER, (FN 12), sec. 11 to Art. 184 PILA). Oth­er legal sys­tems con­sid­er the bur­den of proof rule or cer­tain aspects there­of as part of pro­ce­dur­al law. The gen­er­al rule, pur­suant to which the par­ty rely­ing on a fact must prove the exis­tence there­of is, how­ev­er, not only valid under Swiss law, but rather gen­er­al­ly accept­ed in inter­na­tion­al arbi­tra­tion (see art. 27 para. 1 UNCI­TRAL Arbi­tra­tion Rules (2010); BLACK­A­BY/PARTASIDES, Red­fern and Hunter on Inter­na­tion­al Arbi­tra­tion, 5^th ed, New York 2009, sec. 6 – 92; RED­FERN/HUNTER et al., Law and Prac­tice of Inter­na­tion­al Com­mer­cial Arbi­tra­tion, 4^th ed., Lon­don 2004, sec. 6 – 67; SCHNEI­DER, (FN 12), sec. 12 to Art. 184 PILA). Some authors even con­sid­er the bur­den of proof rule to be part of inter­na­tion­al pub­lic pol­i­cy (see SCHNEI­DER, (FN 12), sec. 12 to Art. 184 PILA with an overview over the dif­fer­ent opin­ions). If this view pre­vailed an infringe­ment of the bur­den of proof rule could even lead to the poten­tial annul­ment of an award (see art. 190 para. 2 lit. e PILA). 
18. See art. 15.1 Swiss Rules; art. 15.2 ICC Rules; art. 19.2 SCC Rules; § 26.1 DIS Rules; art. 17.1 UNCI­TRAL Mod­el Arbi­tra­tion Rules (2010; ​“Mod­el Rules”). 
19. See art. 15.1 Swiss Rules; art. 15.2 and 20.1 ICC Rules; art. 19.2 SCC Rules; § 26.1 DIS Rules; art. 17.1 Mod­el Rules. 
20. See art. 15.1 Swiss Rules; art. 15.1 ICC Rules; art. 19.1 and 26.1 SCC Rules; § 24.1 und 27.1 DIS Rules; art. 17.1 Mod­el Rules. 
21. See art. 24.1 Swiss Rules; art. 27.1 Mod­el Rules. 
22. Art. 3.12.a IBA Rules. 
23. See Com­men­tary on IBA Rules of Evi­dence (2010 edi­tion), p. 9 (www​.ibanet​.org/​L​P​D​/​D​i​s​p​u​t​e​_​R​e​s​o​l​u​t​i​o​n​_​S​e​c​t​i​o​n​/​A​r​b​i​t​r​a​t​i​o​n​/​D​e​f​a​u​l​t​.aspx vis­it­ed: 26 May 2011)
24. See also VON SEGESS­ER, The IBA Rules for the Tak­ing of Evi­dence in Inter­na­tion­al Arbi­tra­tion, ASA Bul­letin 4/2010, p. 746 et seq.
25. See HAN­OTI­AU, Mis­deeds, Wrong­ful Con­duct and Ille­gal­i­ty in Arbi­tral Pro­ceed­ings, in: van den Berg (ed.), Inter­na­tion­al Com­mer­cial Arbi­tra­tion: Impor­tant Con­tem­po­rary Ques­tions, ICCA Con­gress Series, Lon­don 2002, pp. 261 – 287, p. 261 stat­ing that very lit­tle has been writ­ten on the topic.
26. See Pre­lim­i­nary Award in ICC arbi­tra­tion dat­ed 9 Octo­ber 2008, ASA Bul­letin 4/2011, sec. 87 et seqq.; ICSID Award in Case No. ARB/07/2 dat­ed 13 August 2009, sec. 149; BERG­ER/KELLERHALS, (FN 5), sec. 1218; BORN, Inter­na­tion­al Com­mer­cial Arbi­tra­tion, New York 2009, p. 1828; POUDRET/BESSON, Com­par­a­tive Law of Inter­na­tion­al Arbi­tra­tion, 2^nd ed., Lon­don 2007, sec. 655 (with fur­ther ref­er­ence); SCHNEI­DER, (FN 12), sec. 16 to Art. 184 PILA (with ref­er­ence to art. 1467 of the French Nou­veau Code de Pro­ce­dure Civil). 
27. See BERG­ER/KELLERHALS, (FN 5), sec. 1218; POUDRET/BESSON, Com­par­a­tive Law of Inter­na­tion­al Arbi­tra­tion, 2^nd ed., Lon­don 2007, sec. 655 (with fur­ther ref­er­ence), where Bel­gium is not­ed as an exception. 
28. See here­in above, sec. II.A.2 and 3. 
29. See LEBE­DEV in: SANDERS (ed.) Com­par­a­tive Arbi­tra­tion Prac­tice and Pub­lic Pol­i­cy in Arbi­tra­tion The Hague 1987, p. 80; PIETROWS­KI, Evi­dence in Inter­na­tion­al Arbi­tra­tion, 22 Arb Intl 3, 2006, p. 379 and 393. 
30. See BLACK­A­BY/PARTASIDES, (FN 17), sec. 6.99. 
31. See BERG­ER/KELLERHALS, (FN 5), sec. 1218; BLACK­A­BY/PARTASIDES, (FN 17), sec. 6.134; SCHNEI­DER, (FN 12), sec. 16 to Art. 184 PILA; PIETROWS­KI, (FN 29), sec. 394. 
32. “There are no inter­na­tion­al rules on the bur­den of proof, but it is com­mon­ly accept­ed by ICC arbi­tral tri­bunals that alle­ga­tions of fraud call for a high stan­dard of evi­dence [Fur­ther ref­er­ence]”; see Pre­lim­i­nary Award in ICC arbi­tra­tion dat­ed 9 Octo­ber 2008, ASA Bul­letin 4/2011, sec. 94 et seqq. with fur­ther ref­er­ence par­tic­u­lar­ly to Eng­lish law. 
33. See BLACK­A­BY/PARTASIDES, (FN 17), sec. 6.134. 
34. Oth­er­wise, there is a seri­ous risk of an infringe­ment of Respondent’s right to be heard, since the ​“arbi­tral tri­bunal fails to con­sid­er alle­ga­tions, argu­ments, evi­dence and offers of proof pre­sent­ed by a par­ty which are impor­tant for the deci­sion to be made” by not con­sid­er­ing the duly sub­stan­ti­at­ed authen­tic­i­ty chal­lenge of Respon­dent (cf. here­in above FN 11 and 15). 
35. The ques­tion of whether an exist­ing forgery ​“pol­lutes” the entire case of a par­ty will be addressed sep­a­rate­ly in sec­tion III.C here­in below. 
36. See Botschaft zur Schweiz­erischen Zivil­prozes­sor­d­nung vom 28. Juli 2006, BBl 06.062, p. 174 (infor­mal trans­la­tion, empha­sis added). 
37. See ICSID Case No. ARB​(AF)/07/02). 
38. See ICSID Case No. ARB​(AF)/07/02), Award dat­ed 13 August 2009 (date of dis­patch to the par­ties), sec. 141. 
39. See ICSID Case No. ARB​(AF)/07/02), (FN 38), sec. 146. 
40. See ICSID Case No. ARB​(AF)/07/02), (FN 38), sec. 152. 
41. See ICSID Case No. ARB​(AF)/07/02), (FN 38), sec. 153. 
42. See ICSID Case No. ARB​(AF)/07/02), (FN 38), sec. 154. 
43. See ICSID Case No. ARB​(AF)/07/02), (FN 38), sec. 157. 
44. See ICSID Case No. ARB​(AF)/07/02), (FN 38), sec. 161. 
45. See ICSID Case No. ARB​(AF)/07/02), (FN 38), sec. 166. 
46. See ICSID Case No. ARB​(AF)/07/02), (FN 38), sec. 163. 
47. Claimant par­tic­u­lar­ly failed to estab­lish a qual­i­fied invest­ment under the applic­a­ble invest­ment treaty. 
48. See Pre­lim­i­nary Award in ICC arbi­tra­tion dat­ed 9 Octo­ber 2008, (FN 32), sec. 99 et seqq. 
49. See here­in above, II.E. last paragraph. 
50. The absence of the wit­ness was found to be con­spic­u­ous but not suf­fi­cient to estab­lish a forgery by way of neg­a­tive infer­ence; see Pre­lim­i­nary Award in ICC arbi­tra­tion dat­ed 9 Octo­ber 2008, (FN 32), sec. 109 et seqq. 
51. See Pre­lim­i­nary Award in ICC arbi­tra­tion dat­ed 9 Octo­ber 2008, (FN 32), sec. 118 et seqq.; the fact that the ton­er of the text was prob­a­bly added after the sig­na­ture of one of the sig­na­to­ries was not found to be conclusive. 
52. See Pre­lim­i­nary Award in ICC arbi­tra­tion dat­ed 9 Octo­ber 2008, (FN 32), sec. 130 et seqq. 
53. See Pre­lim­i­nary Award in ICC arbi­tra­tion dat­ed 9 Octo­ber 2008, (FN 32), sec. 151 et seqq. 
54. See Pre­lim­i­nary Award in ICC arbi­tra­tion dat­ed 9 Octo­ber 2008, (FN 32), sec. 160 et seqq. 
55. See Pre­lim­i­nary Award in ICC arbi­tra­tion dat­ed 9 Octo­ber 2008, (FN 32), sec. 178 and 181. 
56. E.g. unusu­al use of a let­ter­head as referred to in Pre­lim­i­nary Award in ICC arbi­tra­tion dat­ed 9 Octo­ber 2008, (FN 32), sec. 160 et seqq.; unusu­al trans­la­tion prac­tice (e.g. doc­u­ment only in one lan­guage, if there is a prac­tice of prepar­ing doc­u­ments in two lan­guages, e.g. in the form of two columns); unusu­al use of a com­pa­ny stamp or seal as referred to in Pre­lim­i­nary Award in ICC arbi­tra­tion dat­ed 9 Octo­ber 2008, (FN 32), sec. 130 et seqq.; unusu­al typog­ra­phy; etc. 
57. If a doc­u­ment to which no oth­er doc­u­ment makes any ref­er­ence is sub­mit­ted, this may give rise to doubts on authen­tic­i­ty espe­cial­ly, if the doc­u­ment was rel­e­vant to the rela­tion­ship of the par­ties. At the same time spe­cial cir­cum­stances, such as a con­fi­den­tial­i­ty under­tak­ing, may explain the absence of a paper trail. 
58. See e.g. Pre­lim­i­nary Award in ICC arbi­tra­tion dat­ed 9 Octo­ber 2008, (FN 32), sec. 109 et seqq. How­ev­er, par­tic­u­lar­ly if an old doc­u­ment is at issue, there may be valid rea­sons why the sig­na­to­ries or oth­er wit­ness­es may not be avail­able any more. 
59. In an ICC arbi­tra­tion case which is not pub­licly avail­able, a doc­u­ment pro­vid­ed the address of the coun­ter­par­ty to which it, how­ev­er, only moved some years after the alleged date of the doc­u­ment. Anoth­er exam­ple would be ref­er­ence to a spe­cif­ic (legal) issue which only came up dur­ing the pro­ceed­ings: It is the author’s view that over­ly con­ve­nient con­tents of doc­u­ments which are unusu­al with respect to all rel­e­vant cir­cum­stances may be indi­ca­tions for lack of authen­tic­i­ty in the sense of backdating. 
60. See e.g. ICSID Case No. ARB​(AF)/07/02), (FN 38), sec. 161. At the same time it must be not­ed that eco­nom­ic rea­son­abil­i­ty is nei­ther a require­ment for a valid con­tract, nor for an authen­tic doc­u­ment. Hence, the mere lack of eco­nom­ic rea­son­abil­i­ty would not, in the author’s view, be suf­fi­cient to raise rea­son­able doubts about the authen­tic­i­ty of a document. 
61. E.g. if the par­ties always use a cer­tain means of cor­re­spon­dence (e.g. mail) and one sin­gle doc­u­ment is alleged­ly sent by a dif­fer­ent means of cor­re­spon­dence (e.g. tele­fax), this may add to doubts on the authen­tic­i­ty of the document. 
62. See KOPEN­HAVER, (FN 1) for an introduction. 
63. The fol­low­ing rea­sons led to the above-men­tioned rule of thumb: (i) On the one hand no par­ty should, with­out valid rea­sons, be in a posi­tion to trig­ger cost­ly and time-con­sum­ing exam­i­na­tions of numer­ous doc­u­ments. In par­tic­u­lar, dis­rup­tive pro­ce­dur­al tac­tics such as authen­tic­i­ty chal­lenges of all doc­u­ments on file and the like should be pre­vent­ed. (ii) On the oth­er hand the thresh­old for an authen­tic­i­ty exam­i­na­tion should not be too high in cas­es where a par­ty has real con­cerns regard­ing spe­cif­ic doc­u­ments. In such cas­es the exis­tence of more than one typ­i­cal cir­cum­stance giv­ing rise to authen­tic­i­ty doubts should be suf­fi­cient to not just decide on the basis of a pho­to­copy sub­mit­ted by one of the parties. 
64. See here­in above, sec. II.C. 
65. Art. 3.12.a IBA Rules 
66. See BERG­ER/KELLERHALS, (FN 5), sec. 1218; BLACK­A­BY/PARTASIDES, (FN 17), sec. 6.134; SCHNEI­DER, (FN 12), sec. 16 to Art. 184 PILA and here­in above, sec. II.C. 
67. See BLACK­A­BY/PARTASIDES, (FN 17), sec. 6.134 and here­in above, sec. II.D. 
68. Exam­ple: A side-agree­ment pro­vid­ing for 10% high­er pur­chase price than stip­u­lat­ed in a con­tract is alleged and doc­u­ment D is sub­mit­ted as evi­dence. If the authen­tic­i­ty of doc­u­ment D is duly chal­lenged and can not be proven, the side-agree­ment can still be true: If, e.g., all wit­ness­es, against all expec­ta­tion, tes­ti­fy that there was such a side-agree­ment (but not cod­i­fied in doc­u­ment D), the fact of the 10 % high­er pur­chase price is estab­lished albeit with­out reliance upon doc­u­ment D. 
69. See Mar­itime Delim­i­na­tion and Ter­ri­to­r­i­al Ques­tions between Qatar and Bahrain, Judg­ment of 16 March 2001, avail­able at http://​www​.icj​-cij​.org/ docket/index.php?p1=3&p2=3&k=61&case=87&code=qb&p3=4 (vis­it­ed on 22 July 2011). 
70. See Mar­itime Delim­i­na­tion and Ter­ri­to­r­i­al Ques­tions between Qatar and Bahrain, Judg­ment of 16 March 2001, avail­able at http://​www​.icj​-cij​.org/ docket/index.php?p1=3&p2=3&k=61&case=87&code=qb&p3=4 (vis­it­ed on 22 July 2011), sep­a­rate opin­ion of judge Forti­er, sec. 1 and 2. 
71. “I believe that the Court should not sim­ply dis­re­gard and fail to take into con­sid­er­a­tion this unprece­dent­ed inci­dent. In my opin­ion, these doc­u­ments have ​‘pol­lut­ed’ and ​‘infect­ed’ the whole of Qatar’s case […]”; see sep­a­rate opin­ion of judge Forti­er, (FN 70), sec. 4. 
72. See here­in above, FN 68, for an exam­ple how a fact can be true, irre­spec­tive of an inau­then­tic document. 
73. See BERG­ER/KELLERHALS, (FN 5), sec. 1238 (with fur­ther ref­er­ence), where the prin­ci­ple of free assess­ment of evi­dence is referred to as a cor­ner­stone of mod­ern pro­ce­dur­al law which applies as far as the par­ties have not oth­er­wise agreed. 
74. Regard­ing the ques­tion of arbi­tra­tors’ duties as ​“guardians of pub­lic pol­i­cy” and fur­ther moral con­sid­er­a­tions, see HAN­OTI­AU, (FN 25), p. 283 et seqq. 
75. See WENGER/MÜLLER in: Hon­sell et al. (ed.), Basle Com­men­tary on Inter­na­tion­al Pri­vate Law, 2^nd ed., Basle 2007, sec. 90 et seqq. to Art. 178 PILA (with fur­ther reference). 
76. See DFT 121 II 495, sec. 6; BERG­ER/KELLERHALS, (FN 5), sec. 622; WENGER/MÜLLER, (FN 75), sec. 90 et seqq. to Art. 178 PILA. 
77. See BERG­ER/KELLERHALS, (FN 5), sec. 622 for fur­ther examples. 
78. See BERG­ER/KELLERHALS, (FN 5), sec. 622, sec­ond example. 
79. See WENGER/SCHOTT in: Hon­sell et al. (ed.), Basle Com­men­tary on Inter­na­tion­al Pri­vate Law, 2^nd ed., Basle 2007, sec. 2 et seqq. to Art. 186 PILA (with fur­ther reference). 
80. See DFT 121 III 495, sec. 6c and 6^d; BERG­ER/KELLERHALS, (FN 5), sec. 622 and 622a. 
81. See DFT 121 III 495, sec. 6^d; BERG­ER/KELLERHALS, (FN 5), sec. 622a where art. 186 PILA is express­ly men­tioned in con­nec­tion with cas­es of ​“iden­ti­ty of defects”. 
82. Depend­ing on the con­cept of declara­to­ry claims in a par­tic­u­lar juris­dic­tion a dec­la­ra­tion regard­ing the exis­tence of a mere fact (i.e. the authen­tic­i­ty of a doc­u­ment) is, for exam­ple, not even admissible. 
83. See here­in above, sec. II.E. 
84. In order to safe­guard respondent’s legit­i­mate inter­ests for the even­tu­al­i­ty that an arbi­tra­tion agree­ment were indeed a forgery, an arbi­tral tri­bunal may con­sid­er order­ing a secu­ri­ty for respondent’s costs, if cir­cum­stances which raise rea­son­able doubts are plead­ed and such secu­ri­ty is request­ed (see BERG­ER/KELLERHALS, (FN 5), sec. 1460 et seqq.). 
85. See here­in above, sec. III.A.3.