Dutch Investor Loses Anaklia Port Arbitration Case

The International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), a World Bank-affiliated arbitration body based in Washington, has rejected a claim by Dutch investor Bob Meijer seeking compensation from the Georgian government over the contract termination in the Anaklia Deep Sea Port project.

Meijer, a former investor in the Anaklia Development Consortium (ADC), filed the arbitration case in 2020, alleging that the Georgian Government’s termination of its investment agreement with ADC amounted to a breach of the bilateral investment treaty between Georgia and the Netherlands.

The initial plans to develop the Anaklia Deep Sea Port collapsed after the Georgian government terminated its contract in 2020 with the Anaklia Development Consortium (ADC), a joint venture between Georgian TBC Holding and U.S.-based Conti International. The termination followed a criminal investigation into alleged money laundering from 2008 involving TBC founders Mamuka Khazaradze and Badri Japaridze, and Conti’s withdrawal from the project. Khazaradze has claimed that the Georgian Dream authorities deliberately sabotaged the Anaklia port project.

Anaklia Development Consortium (ADC) has already lost an arbitration case against the Georgian government at the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) in 2024. Khazaradze and Japaridze founded the opposition Lelo party in 2019, and both are currently in prison after boycotting a Georgian Dream-led parliamentary commission.

The document of the latest ICSID ruling is not publicly available, and the first to report the decision was the Ministry of Justice of Georgia, which welcomed the ICSID ruling in the July 31 statement.

“Mamuka Khazaradze and Badri Japaridze lost the dispute on Anaklia in the Washington arbitration too,” the Ministry said, noting the ruling confirmed that “the failure to implement the Anaklia Port project is entirely the responsibility of Mamuka Khazaradze, Badri Japaridze, and their partners.”

According to the Ministry, the tribunal found that the investor “alone bore the commercial risks of the project,” and failed to meet its contractual obligations, including securing funding. The decision also found the government lawfully terminated the investment agreement in January 2020 after multiple deadline extensions to seek funding, the Ministry said. The Ministry further said that the tribunal rejected Meijer’s USD 64 million compensation claim and “instead ordered him to pay USD 6.5 million to the Government of Georgia.”

“The legality of the criminal proceedings related to alleged money laundering against Mamuka Khazaradze and Badri Japaridze was not brought into question,” the statement added.

The opposition Lelo party responded by accusing GD officials of “lying” by connecting the ICSID case with its party leaders. “This was a dispute between investor Bob Meijer against the state,” the party said, adding that, no matter the arbitration outcome, “the government killed the Anaklia project on Russia’s orders six years ago and has made no progress to this day.”

Bob Meijer also commented on the ruling, calling it “disappointing.” Meijer didn’t disclose the details, but said that “the Tribunal only examined a narrow question: whether the Government was within its rights under the Georgia-Netherlands bilateral investment treaty to terminate the investment Agreement.”

Anaklia Development Consortium, for its part, argued that the ruling does not absolve the government of its responsibility. The Consortium accused the Georgian Dream government of “five years of broken promises and empty rhetoric” about plans to build the port. “But here we are, five years later, and there is no signed agreement with any developer, much less actual construction,” the Consortium said.

Tbilisi intensified talks on reviving the Anaklia project after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 shifted part of international cargo transit toward the Middle Corridor, a trade route connecting Europe and Asia via Georgia.

In May 2024, Economy Minister Levan Davitashvili announced that a Chinese-Singaporean consortium had won the bid to develop the port. However, critics questioned the reputation of selected companies, with some of them landing on the U.S. and World Bank’s blacklists. Officials have expressed hope that the deep-water port will receive its first ship by 2028.

Also Read:

• 28/07/2025 – Georgian Dream Delegation Visits China
• 02/04/2025 – U.S. Helsinki Commission Reprimands Georgian Dream for “Surrendering” Anaklia Port to Chinese Control
• 06/06/2024 – TI Georgia: Chinese Company with ‘Questionable Reputation’ to Build Anaklia Port
• 27/11/2023 – World Bank Report: Middle Corridor Volumes Expected to Triple by 2030

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