Lausanne: The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) is preparing to open a temporary office in Sochi in order to resolve legal disputes which may arise during the Olympic Games. This special tribunal, called the CAS ad hoc Division, has operated at each edition of the summer and Winter Olympic Games since 1996, as well as at numerous editions of the Commonwealth Games, the UEFA European Football Championships and the FIFA World Cup.
In September this year and for the first time, it will also be present at the Asian Games in Incheon. The CAS ad hoc Division will provide all participants in the Games with free access to justice rendered within time limits that keep pace with the competitions.
The tribunal for the Sochi 2014 Games will be presided over by Michael Lenard (USA) and Ms Corinne Schmidhauser (Switzerland), and composed of the following nine arbitrators who will be in charge of settling any dispute related to the Games: Robert Décary (Canada), Gary Roberts (USA), Matt Mitten (USA), David Wu (China), Annabelle Bennett (Australia), Alexandra Brilliantova (Russia), Patrick Lafranchi (Switzerland), Luigi Fumagalli (Italy), Brigitte Stern (France). The Presidents and the arbitrators have been selected by the International Council of Arbitration for Sport (ICAS), an independent body, under the aegis of which the CAS operates. The office in Sochi will be headed by the CAS Secretary General, Mr Matthieu Reeb.
All members of the CAS ad hoc Division who will be present in Sochi during the Games are either lawyers, judges or professors specialized in sports law and arbitration. They are independent of the parties who appear before the CAS and apply a procedure (set out in the Arbitration Rules for the Olympic Games) that complies with fundamental principles of procedural fairness and due process.
According to the applicable rules, if during the Olympic Games a participant or sports entity wishes to submit a dispute to the ad hoc Division under the terms of the Olympic Charter, he/she/it must file a request with the CAS Court Office in Sochi.
The President of the ad hoc Division will then set up a Panel composed of either one or three arbitrators; following which a hearing is rapidly convened, at which all parties, witnesses and potentially affected third parties are given the opportunity to express their legal arguments and to produce evidence.
Generally, the ad hoc Division will render its decisions within 24 hours. This is made possible by specially designed logistics and organizational structures. The CAS will be operational in Sochi from 28 January 2014 until 23 February 2014.
The CAS offices will be located at:
Ayvazovsky Hotel, 1 Morskoy Boulevard
Imeretinskaya Lowland, Adler District, Krasnodar Region, Russia 354340
Tel: +7-862-44 7 16 50. Fax: +7-862-44 7 16 56. Email: adhocdivision@tas-cas.org
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