Salans Paris recently obtained a landmark decision from the Paris Commercial Court for an international law issue.
Banque Franco-Yougoslave, under suspicion of having been used by Slobodan Milosevic to sidestep international sanctions, had sued the National Bank of Yugoslavia before the Paris Commercial Court for the payment of USD 80 million. During the course of the proceedings, the country Yugoslavia ceased to exist and the National Bank of Yugoslavia became defunct.
The Commercial Court rejected Banque Franco-Yougoslave's argument that the National Bank of Serbia was the same entity as the National Bank of Yugoslavia except that it had simply changed its name. The Court held that the disappearance of the State of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia had brought about the disappearance of the National Bank of Yugoslavia and that the National Bank of Serbia was a new legal entity, the central bank of the new State of the Republic of Serbia. It therefore found that the National Bank of Yugoslavia's assets had been divided out among the central banks of the successor States.
The particular interest of this case is that it considers Article 370 of the Civil Procedure Code on the interruption of proceedings to be applicable to a legal entity and that it applies this article in the exceptional circumstance of the disappearance of a central bank.
The Paris team advising the National Bank of Yugoslavia and then the National Bank of Serbia was composed of Partner François Froment-Meurice, and Of Counsels Rémi Barousse, Jean-Patrice Bouchet and Gilles Especel.