OREANDA-NEWS. November 13, 2009. Ukraine's Supreme Court has overruled the country's High Court of Arbitration by decreeing that Uktranscontainer's (UTC) contract with state-run Sea Commercial Port of Illichivsk (SCPI) be cancelled. The stevedore has been asked to leave the port with immediate effect, leaving SCPI in sole charge of all container terminal operations.

The reason for the decision is not clear, sitting somewhere between the original contract with UTC not being in the national interest, to inefficiency on the part of the stevedore. It is so complicated that there have been three previous lower court rulings on the case, each with a different result. The parent company of UTC, Russia-based National Container Company, is so incensed at what it interprets as unfair dismissal that it is now threatening further legal action. However, the only option left is an international court of law. In the meantime NCC's top management says that other private companies wanting to invest in the Ukraine should be warned that 'the Ukrainian Government has been deliberately pursuing a course towards nationalising private enterprise and embezzling the assets brought into the country by foreign and domestic entrepreneurs'.

In support of its case, the Russian company has produced a vast array of impressive operational and commercial benefits introduced by UTC since taking over the terminal in Illichivsk in 2005 which suggests that 'inefficiency' cannot be part of the equation. Moreover, it points out that since the previous High Court of Arbitration's ruling in September that UTC's contract with SCPI be restored, UTC was unfairly impeded from resuming operations by SCPI which clearly favoured working with Portovik Service (PS), a private company controlled by the son of its top manager.