Expropriation

The present article deals with the issues of nationalization and expropriation in the light of Iran-United States Claims Tribunal Awards by looking at their legality and the limits on the rights of states to nationalise and expropriate, while discussing some case law. I will argue that the state’s right to nationalize foreign property is an attribute of its sovereignty and derives from territorial supremacy of the state. It is also proposed to examine the questions of State responsibility for the injurious consequences of certain wrongful acts or omissions during the Revolution of 1979. The question is whether the events of the revolution and the appointment of temporary managers to administer the foreign companies’ affairs could be interpreted as constituting an expropriation and whether this measure is in full accord with international jurisprudence. The Tribunal’s decisions make it clear that regardless of whether the state has obtained any value of property or not, responsibility exists whenever acts attributable to a state have deprived a foreigner of his property rights.

The present article will discuss the issue of compensation in cases of expropriation and nationalization in the light of the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal. It is a well recognized rule in international law that the property of alien cannot be taken without appropriate compensation. But, the standard of compensation for expropriated private property has been the subject of controversy between Western and developing countries since the end of World War II. In alters woads, the standard to be applied in determining compensation remained a controversial issue at a theoretical level. The main argument has been whether the traditional standard of full compensation is a general rule of law applicable in all cases. In this article, awards of the Iran-US Claims Tribunal have been wseof in an attempt to show that the prevailed rules defy any conclusion that full compensation must be paid in all cases when foreign property is taken by the State.

Purpose: Penal procedure is a long process starts from crime discovery and ends to penal verdict execution. The result of such process can be observed in final step of penal procedure, that is, penal verdict execution. Convictions mentioned in penal verdict in Iranian legal system are too diverse so they can be initially divided into financial and nonfinancial convictions. Methodology: The present research is applied in terms of purpose and content analysis method. In the organization of research, the documentary and library methods have been used and the information analysis has been obtained qualitatively and based on the inference of the researcher on the sources and texts. Findings: The execution of penal financial convictions including cash fine, property restitution, crime – related loss, blood money, expropriation and destroying the assets are encountering with a series of radical challenges. Iranian Penal Procedure Law (2013, amended in 2015) and law on How to Execute Financial Convictions (2015) have resolved some relevant problems while some issues such as abusing the payment of financial convictions in instalments, the possibility of abusing in proving insolvency by the attestation of two witness, transferring the burden of proving losing party’s affordability to winning party are still remained. Conclusion: In this vein, some conflicts between legal provisions, transferring procedure previous problems to penal verdicts execution, lack of an independent and strong structure and machinery to execute penal verdicts are, inter alia, the most important challenges for executing penal financial convictions in Iran.

The present article aims to examine the risk of host governments’ interference with the property of foreign investors (expropriation) in the petroleum industry. Host states have the police power to make regulatory changes. The ‘police power’ is defined as the inherent and plenary power of a sovereign to make all laws necessary and proper to preserve the public security, order, health, morality, and justice. It is a fundamental power essential to government, and it cannot be surrendered by the legislature or irrevocably transferred away from government. The government can interfere with the contract and change the contract terms or may even directly take the investment. This is the main reason for international petroleum disputes and international arbitration practice has addressed such risk. For this purpose, the concept of property and compensable property rights under international law are of great significance. Indeed, expropriation conveys a deprivation of a property owner of this property. This paper assesses the concept of expropriation, the international legal requirements for a lawful expropriation, and then, analyses the relevant international arbitral awards in petroleum jurisprudence.

Clarification of the legal and religious status of property ownership rights and paving the way for elimination of defects and completing existing rules and therefore, expanding economic security as well as determining and explaining the limits of expropriation by religious legitimate government and religious statement of permission of such an action from the Islamic State and clearing objectives which cause political system ignore ownership of individuals and expropriation of them are among thing which are required to be reviewed in the Iranian legal system because article 1 of the urban land law approved in 1987 states that: “this law was passed in order to regulate and formulate issues related to land and increased supply and reforming and stabilizing its price as one of the major factors of production and public and social welfare and creating more accurate and wider backgrounds to maintain and exploit the lands as well as allowing for the implementation of Article 31 and meeting the goals set forth in Articles 43, 45 and 47 of constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran to provide housing and public facilities”. Nevertheless, the author of this article is trying to answer this question that what are legal basis and purposes of expropriation and limiting urban lands ownership? To answer this crucial question; we will initially explain the concept of expropriation and then, we will review principles and legal reasons for permission for this action by the government and then, we will explain the purposes of expropriation and limiting land ownership. Legal Principles of expropriation and limitation of ownership of urban lands by the government are cases such as special powers of the supreme Leader, private owners being bound to observe the legal criteria, preventing injurious to others in the exercise of the ownership right and the necessity of observing Islamic standards in financial and economic affairs. Objectives of expropriation and Limitation of Urban lands ownership by the government are items such as Public service, avoiding loss of others and issuing fines and penalties (financial punishment).