Grounds for Annulment of an Arbitral Award
Article 68 of the Law on Commercial Arbitration 2010 stipulates the grounds for annulment of an arbitral award as follows:
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Initiation by request:
The Court shall review the annulment of an arbitral award only upon the request of one of the parties. -
Grounds for annulment:
An arbitral award shall be annulled if it falls into any of the following cases:
a) There is no arbitration agreement or the arbitration agreement is invalid;
b) The composition of the arbitral tribunal or the arbitral proceedings were inconsistent with the parties’ agreement or contrary to the provisions of this Law;
c) The dispute falls outside the jurisdiction of the arbitral tribunal;
– In case an arbitral award contains matters beyond the tribunal’s jurisdiction, only that part shall be annulled;
d) The evidence on which the arbitral tribunal relied to issue its award was forged, or an arbitrator received money, property, or other material benefits from one of the parties, thereby affecting the impartiality and fairness of the award;
đ) The arbitral award contravenes the fundamental principles of Vietnamese law. -
Burden of proof:
When the Court considers a request for annulment of an arbitral award, the burden of proof is determined as follows:
a) The party requesting annulment based on the grounds specified in Points a, b, c, and d of Clause 2 of this Article bears the burden of proving that the arbitral tribunal issued its award under one of those circumstances;
b) For the ground specified in Point đ, Clause 2 of this Article (i.e., violation of fundamental principles of Vietnamese law), the Court itself has the duty to verify and collect evidence to decide whether to annul the arbitral award or not.
