Piercing The Corporate Veil In ICSID

Because of the inconsistent awards and the inherent procedural interest bias to the investors, ICISD arbitration, as the most important international investment dispute settlement machanism, is lossing its legitimacy and credibility. Piercing the corporate veil is a frequently-used method to determine the nationality of the coporate investors to examine the ICSID jurisdiction, but the judgment standards on relevant questions are inexplicit on face, ICSID tribunals are quesioned to expand the jurisdiction unreasonably so that damage the rights and interests of host countries, the legitimacy of ICSID arbitration gets more challenges. After analyzing some practical cases, however, we can find that the awards of ICSID show rel atively consistency and regularity, rather than being arbitrary, which could provide the host co untries and investors with legal predictability to some extent.In adition, the atittudde and practices of ICSID tribunals to some questions violate the ICSID Convention, so it's necessary to discuss reasonable solutions to correct the pracitce of ICSID tribunals and perfect the judgment criteria on piercing the corporate veil in ICSID arbitration. This paper is divided into four parts:The first part is an overview. It first presents the system background about peircing the corprate veil in ICSID arbitration, including the jurisdiction rules of ICSID and the general criteria on determining the natinality of corporate investors.On such basis, it gives a clear definition of piercing the corporate veil in CISID, and then explains the research significance and the origin about the topical subject of this paper combining with the legitimacy crisis in international investment arbitrtoion.The second part displayed and combed the practices of ICSID on piercing the corporate veil. By categorizing them into two pathes- the path of “foreign control” examination under nationality agreement and the path of “pro forma nationality” determination- this part analyses the treatment and attitude of ICSID in some practical cases and then summarizes some regular patterns of ICSID practice and its relatively stable attitude, providing predictability to some extent for the settlement of international investment disputes between investors and host countries.The third part assesses and rethinks current practice of piercing the corporate veil by ICSID. Meanwhile, this part explores the solutions of relevant controversial issues, to perfect and unify the judgment criteria on piercing the corporate veil for ICSID tribunals.The fourth part is conclusion, it also gives some advice on the prevention of relevant legal risk based on the reality of China.