{"id":353,"date":"2008-10-29T03:27:00","date_gmt":"2008-10-29T08:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/itn.mattrock.ca\/2008\/10\/29\/canadian-investors-sue-costa-rica-alleging-failure-to-protect-their-farm\/"},"modified":"2013-02-08T05:08:14","modified_gmt":"2013-02-08T11:08:14","slug":"canadian-investors-sue-costa-rica-alleging-failure-to-protect-their-farm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/itn\/2008\/10\/29\/canadian-investors-sue-costa-rica-alleging-failure-to-protect-their-farm\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadian investors sue Costa Rica alleging failure to protect their farm"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Fernando Cabrera Diaz and Damon Vis-Dunbar<br \/>\n29 October 2008<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A tribunal has been constituted in an arbitration that pits a group of Canadian investors against the government of Costa Rica. The claimants\u2014Vancouver-based Quadrant Pacific Growth Fund L.P. and Conasco Holdings Inc\u2014allege that Costa Rican authorities failed to protect their orange plantations from peasants who squatted on their land and sabotaged their operations.<\/p>\n<p>The tribunal consists of Alejandro M. Garro, Bernardo M. Cremades (President) and Andreas F. Lowenfeld.<\/p>\n<p>In their request for arbitration, the claimants complain that during 2003-2005, their property in Costa Rica was \u201cinvaded\u201d by squatters who blocked access to the farm and intimidated employees. The Canadians accuse Costa Rican law enforcement agencies of failing to respond, despite repeated pleas for protection.<\/p>\n<p>The farm operation had been dealt \u201ca fatal blow\u201d after \u201cthree years of upheaval,\u201d said management of Quadrant Pacific Growth Fund in a note to its investors earlier this year.<\/p>\n<p>In 2005, the families who had been expelled from the claimant\u2019s farm protested outside the offices of the Costa Rican Agrarian Development Institute (IDA).<\/p>\n<p><span class='tooltipsall tooltipsincontent classtoolTips60'>ITN<\/span> spoke to IDA official Daniel Aries, who explained that the peasants had reached an agreement with the government, under which they would be re-located to another piece of land.\u00a0 He said the IDA was currently in the process of buying land to place the remaining 14 members of the group.<\/p>\n<p>Danelia Garciaz, one of the peasants who occupied the farm, said in an interview with ITN that they used what was then vacant land for the purposes of subsistence farming before being expelled three year later.<\/p>\n<p>Quadrant Pacific Growth Fund L.P. and Conasco Holdings are alleging breaches of the fair and equitable treatment and the full protection and security provisions of the 1998 Canada-Costa Rica Foreign Investment Protection Agreement (FIPA), and say they are seeking at least US$ 20 million in damages.<\/p>\n<p>The case was registered with the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (<span class='tooltipsall tooltipsincontent classtoolTips18'>ICSID<\/span>) in March 2008.<\/p>\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"> toolTips('.classtoolTips18','International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes'); <\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> toolTips('.classtoolTips60','Investment Treaty News'); <\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> toolTips('.classtoolTips63','Bilateral investment treaty'); <\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> toolTips('.classtoolTips65','East African community'); <\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> toolTips('.classtoolTips67','Energy Charter Treaty'); <\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> toolTips('.classtoolTips72','Investment Court System'); <\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> toolTips('.classtoolTips100','investissement direct \u00e9tranger'); <\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> toolTips('.classtoolTips110','inversi\u00f3n extranjera directa'); <\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> toolTips('.classtoolTips114','Sistema de Tribunales de Inversiones'); <\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> toolTips('.classtoolTips116','European Commission'); <\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> toolTips('.classtoolTips118','Union europ\u00e9enne'); <\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> toolTips('.classtoolTips119','Uni\u00f3n Europea'); <\/script>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Fernando Cabrera Diaz and Damon Vis-Dunbar 29 October 2008 A tribunal has been constituted in an arbitration that pits a group of Canadian investors against the government of Costa [&hellip;]<script type=\"text\/javascript\"> toolTips('.classtoolTips63','Bilateral investment treaty'); <\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> toolTips('.classtoolTips114','Sistema de Tribunales de Inversiones'); <\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":15869,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1975,1984,1924],"class_list":["post-353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-itn","tag-agriculture-and-fisheries","tag-fair-and-equitable-treatment-fet","tag-icsid"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/itn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/itn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/itn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/itn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/itn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/itn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/itn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/itn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/itn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/itn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}