The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Tuesday rejected a Brazilian sugar cane magnate’s last-ditch effort to vacate $120 million in arbitration awards against him. Adriano Giannetti Dedini Ometto had argued that the award should be tossed because the arbitration panel’s original chairman, David Rivkin of Debevoise & Plimpton, didn’t disclose that his colleagues at Debevoise worked on deals involving Ometto’s adversary in the case.
The dispute stemmed from a soured sugarcane deal in 2007 between Ometto and the Spanish biofuels company Abengoa Bioenergia Agricola Ltda., known as Abengoa. Abengoa alleged in two International Chamber of Commerce arbitrations in New York that Ometto misrepresented aspects of the sale of his sugarcane businesses. In 2011, with help from Iñigo Quintana of the Madrid firm Cuatrecasas, Gonçalves Pereira, the company won two awards totaling roughly $120 million.
