The Delhi High Court on Wednesday put on hold the Amazon-Future arbitration going on before a three-member arbitral tribunal adjudicating Amazon’s objections to Future Retail’s asset-sale deal with Reliance Industries.
A bench of Chief Justice D.N. Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh said there was a prima facie case in favour of Future. Listing the case for hearing on February 1, the court also stayed the January 4 single-judge bench order dismissing Future Group’s pleas for a direction to the tribunal in Singapore to decide on its application to terminate the arbitration proceedings.
“We hereby stay further proceedings of the arbitral tribunal till the next date of hearing and we also stay the single judge’s January 4 order till the next date of hearing,” the high court said as
The U.S.-based e-commence giant Amazon, which has 49% stake in FCPL, is embroiled in legal battles with the Kishore Biyani-led Future Group after the latter agreed in August 2020 to sell its assets to Reliance Retail.
Amazon has been objecting to the Future-Reliance deal contending that it had invested ₹1,400 crore in FCPL in 2019.
In December last year, the Competition Commission of India kept the 2019 deal between Amazon and Future Group in abeyance and imposed a penalty of ₹202 crore on Amazon “for providing false information” and “suppressing material particulars”.
