A foreign business group says the Lao government’s actions could destroy the country’s investment environment.
The Lao government is largely tightlipped over a lawsuit filed against it by a China-based investment company which claims it was bilked out of hundreds of millions of dollars when its holdings were seized by authorities in the Southeast Asian state.
Sanum Investments Ltd. last week filed a suit through the World Bank’s International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes, alleging that the Lao government had broken international treaties it signed promising to protect foreign investment by “the illegal taking of a U.S. $400 million investment.”
Sanum, a partner in and manager of several hotel and casino projects throughout Laos, initially invested U.S. $85 million in the country five years ago, but said that the Lao government began to strip it of its projects once they began to generate substantial revenue by canceling relevant contracts and levying retroactive taxes.
The company alleges that its investment in Laos is worth at least U.S. $400 million.
But while Sanum said that the Lao government had recently been served with the lawsuit, government officials when contacted by Radio Free Asia’s Lao service refused to comment on the case
