Leak, conflict and loss of arbitration: inside a Tata Power Mumbai FIR

Mumbai and Bengaluru: Tata Power Co. Ltd has accused a Singapore arbitrator of conflict of interest and its own former officials of leaking company data, in a case that reads like a corporate spy story. A Singapore court had last week ordered seizure of shares of Tata Power’s Singapore arms to recover $490 million of dues, concluding an years-long arbitration between Tata Power and its estranged private equity partner.

In a first information report (FIR) filed in Mumbai on 2 November, Tata Power alleged that one of the arbitrators who ruled against it had travelled to Russia with the rival’s director and co-founder before the case started. To be sure, Tata Power did not mention this while it challenged the arbitration decision in Singapore. The FIR also says its former employees passed on information to its rivals, weakening its case in Singapore.

For background, British Virgin Islands-based Kleros Capital Partners Ltd shared confidential data with Tata Power in 2013 under a non-disclosure agreement to jointly develop a Russian coal deposit, but Tata Power subsequently proceeded to secure the mining rights independently. Tata Power dropped the project in 2020, but Kleros initiated arbitration over the breach, winning a $490 million award in 2025 that has since ballooned to $650 million with interest. After the Singapore court dismissed Tata Power’s challenges, an enforcement order was granted to seize and sell Tata Power’s shares in two Singapore subsidiaries to satisfy the outstanding debt.

Travel charge

A key figure in the Tata Power is FIR is Stuart Isaacs KC, a London-based barrister and one of the three arbitrators in the Singapore case. According to Tata Power’s complaint, Ingolfur Skulason, a director of Kleros Capital, “arranged” for Isaacs and Kleros’s expert witness John L. Weiss to travel to Russia in 2017 and 2018, and that “the three of them had many meetings”. The police report says that neither man revealed their connection or the trips during the arbitration.

Isaacs, who was Kleros’s nominee on the three-member tribunal in the Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC), denied all allegations, calling them “demonstrably untrue”.

“The allegations which are apparently made in the complaint are wholly without foundation in every respect and are scurrilous,” Isaacs said in an email in response to Mint’s queries. He said the allegations were already rejected by the SIAC, whose decision was upheld by the Singapore High Court, adding that these allegations were not even advanced by Tata Power before the Singapore High Court.

Tata Power had raised the allegations first in SIAC, which rejected them. However, while challenging the tribunal decision in Singapore International Commercial Court (SICC), Tata Power did not raise these conflict allegations.

“My first and only contact with Mr Skulason and Mr Weiss was when they gave evidence in the arbitration proceedings,” Isaacs said.

A spokesperson for Tata Power did not offer a comment.

Espionage charge

Tata Power also accused Kleros Capital of corporate spying. Its police complaint said Kleros directors Skulason and Probodh Palit, worked together with barrister Isaacs and expert Weiss, and two former Tata Power employees to commit financial fraud against the company.

Mint has seen a copy of the FIR. Kleros Capital did not respond to Mint’s request for a comment. Mint’s email to Weiss requesting comment went unanswered.

Tata Power said in the FIR that two of its former employees sent the company’s confidential documents, including legal papers, witness statements, questionnaires, and a report from independent organization Lenmorniiproekt, to their personal email accounts. The company said they later shared these with Kleros, hurting Tata Power’s case during arbitration.

Tata Power said on Saturday that it has filed an appeal with the Singapore Court of Appeals. However, that appeal does not pause the seizure of its shares in the two Singapore subsidiaries.

According to Ankita Singh, managing partner at law firm Sarvaank Associates, challenging an arbitral award on grounds of apparent bias or non-disclosure is a recognized protection in international arbitration, but it carries a very demanding evidentiary threshold. Supervisory courts in pro-arbitration seats like Singapore adhere to a strict policy of minimal intervention in arbitration matters to keep the process independent and final, she explained.

Awards are not reviewed on their substantive merits, she said, and the applicant must demonstrate to a fair-minded observer that the tribunal’s impartiality was fundamentally compromised.

Meanwhile, if Kleros seeks enforcement in India, Tata Power could argue under the Arbitration Act that the award was “induced or affected by fraud or corruption,” which, according to an industry expert, explains why the company filed the FIR.

Back story

Kleros’s partners contacted Tata Power in 2013 with “special and confidential” information about a coal mine reserve in the Kamchatka region of eastern Russia. They said coal from there could be supplied to Tata Power’s thermal power plant at Mundra in Gujarat for less than $50 per tonne, far cheaper than market prices. Based on this information, Tata Power signed a confidentiality agreement with Kleros to invest together in the project. However, business disagreements ended the partnership in March 2016, with no joint investments.

Tata Power said that Kleros misled it by claiming the mining licence would cost $175 million. The Mumbai company later got the licence for $4 million in December 2017 through a public auction, after its plans with Kleros failed.

After securing the licence, Tata Power commissioned a study by an independent organization called Lenmorniiproekt and realized that it would cost a lot more than $50 per tonne to mine and ship the coal to Mundra. Kamchatka is a remote peninsula in Russia’s Far East known for its extreme cold and remoteness. The company’s board abandoned the plan in 2020.

Kleros accused Tata Power of misusing the information it got under confidentiality and bidding for the mining licence on its own, excluding the fund. The Singapore arbitrators ruled in Kleros’s favour and awarded it over $490 million in damages based on an average of two estimates. John L Weiss, Kleros’ expert witness and mining consultant, provided the estimates.