Swiss Federal Supreme Court (SFT) Judgment of 18 November 2025, A. v. UIB
Motion to set aside CAS Award CAS 2023/A/9669 of 30 May 2025
The case concerned the non-payment of the second instalment of a transfer fee owed by an English football club (West Ham, the English Club) to a Russian club (CSKA Moscow, the Russian Club) under an international transfer agreement concluded back in 2021. Following the introduction of UK and US sanctions against various Russian entities after the invasion of Ukraine, the English Club took the position that payment was legally impossible, notably due to the designation of certain Russian banks and uncertainties surrounding the ownership and control of the creditor club.
The case was brought to FIFA’s Players’ Status Chamber, which ordered immediate payment, while the CAS partially upheld the appeal, holding that the debt subsisted but that payment was temporarily suspended until the sanctions regime was lifted or the necessary authorisations were obtained. The Russian Club challenged the CAS award before the SFT, invoking a violation of its right to be heard under Article 190 para. 2 (d) PILA, to the extent that the CAS had only considered its arguments raised in the answer but not the ones during the hearing or the post-hearing submissions (at 5.2).
The SFT rejected the appeal in its entirety, reiterating that it is bound by the facts as established by the arbitral tribunal and that the CAS has only a minimum duty to examine and address the relevant issues but is not not required to discuss every argument or evidence in detail.
Accordingly, the SFT found the Russian Club’s grievances to be appellatory in nature, seeking to obtain a substantive review of the CAS panel’s sanctions analysis. It further observed that the panel had expressly examined the core issue of whether payment was legally possible under the UK and US sanctions regimes with a specific section of the award to this question (at 5.3). It further noted that the panel had analysed the role of the UK Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI), the uncertainty surrounding the club’s ownership and control, and the absence of authorised alternative payment routes. The fact that the panel did not expressly address all the claimant’s subsidiary arguments – such as the alleged availability of other banks or the adequacy of the debtor’s efforts – did not amount to a denial of the right to be heard, as these points were either implicitly rejected or not found to be decisive.
All in all, the judgment confirms the SFT’s restrictive understanding of the right to be heard in international sports arbitration. In sanctions-related disputes, the judgment also (indirectly) validated the panel’s approach of treating regulatory impediments as a temporary hindrance to performance but not an extinction of the debt itself.
