Summary

... we respectfully submit this letter requesting a pre-motion conference and setting forth the grounds of Defendants' anticipated: (1) motion to dismiss Plaintiff Republic of Kazakhstan's claims under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 8(a), 9(b), and 12(b)(6); and (2) motion to compel arbitration and dismiss Plaintiff Outrider Management L.L.C.'s claims.

Defendants also intend to seek a stay of discovery pending the outcome of the motions. For a number of reasons, the claims of both Kazakhstan and Outrider should be dismissed.[1]

This case is part of Kazakhstan's years-long attempt to evade payment on a $500 million arbitration award that was entered against it in Sweden in 2013 (the "SCC Award"). That very same award was confirmed by the Honorable Amy Berman Jackson, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, in an opinion issued in 2018, and affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. In a separate opinion, Judge Jackson likewise dismissed Civil RICO claims asserted by Kazakhstan in connection with the confirmation of the SCC Award. Litigation remains pending before Judge Jackson over the identity of various Kazakh assets, hidden or otherwise, in the United States that may be subject to attachment.

Kazakhstan's harassment campaign to avoid payment of this validly-confirmed final award started with lawsuits against the prevailing parties in the Swedish arbitration, non-parties Anatolie Stati, Gabriel Stati, and companies controlled by them (collectively, the "Statis"), whose assets in oil and gas development were expropriated by Kazakhstan through the well-known tactics used by autocratic governments around the world and identified by the arbitrators in the SCC Award, including manipulation of license requirements, bogus fee and tax assessments, imposition of meritless criminal charges on Statis employees, and interfering with the Statis' ability to obtain funding - in short, "a string of measures of coordinated harassment." See Award, Exhibit A to Declaration of Charlene Sun, Stati v. Republic of Kazakhstan, No. 1:14-cv-1638 (D.D.C. Sept. 30, 2014), ECF. No. 2-1, ¶¶ 1088-89, 1093, 1095. Courts around the world, in addition to the U.S.

District Court for the District of Columbia, have consistently rejected Kazakhstan's allegations of fraud as transparent and meritless attempts to re-litigate the SCC Award. Because its claims of fraud have been continually frustrated in subsequent enforcement actions, Kazakhstan now attempts to re-litigate those same claims against Defendants, which include the investment manager to various funds ("ACP Funds") holding interests in publicly-traded notes (the "Notes") that were issued by a holding company for the Statis' activities in Kazakhstan.

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Footnotes omitted from this introduction