Biography

Koorosh Ameli is an arbitrator and legal consultant in international legal disputes and founder of Ameli International Arbitration in the Hague area of the Netherlands. He is a Law graduate of Harvard University and a Fellow of the Charted Institute of Arbitrators. Koorosh is a member of the International Law Association International Commercial Arbitration Committee, ICC Institute of World Business Law, ICC Commission on Arbitration and ADR, ICC Netherlands Commission on Arbitration and ADR, London Court of International Arbitration and various other arbitral institutions. For the 26 years prior to Koorosh founding his business, he worked for the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal. The Tribunal was established in 1981 pursuant to the Algiers Accords, an international agreement between Iran and the USA to resolve 1000 major and 3000 small claims mostly by US nationals against Iran and certain claims between the two governments. With the Tribunal, Koorosh served initially as a legal advisor and soon later as arbitrator in treaty disputes between states and treaty-based cases of expropriation of foreign investments and property rights, state contracts, construction and commercial contracts. He was arbitrator in more than 100 major and complex cases concerning defense, petroleum, telecommunication, housing, and banking industries before the Tribunal as well as in a numbers of ICC, DIFC-LCIA and ad hoc arbitration cases. Koorosh was a member of the steering committee for the Permanent Court of Arbitration for revitalization of its rules of procedure where his experience with the UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules at the Iran-US Claims Tribunal contributed to the adoption of the UNCITRAL Rules for the PCA with appropriate amendments, a historic development where a dormant PCA soon turned to a very active institution and which presently has 117 pending cases before it. Since his resignation from the Tribunal in 2009, he has been appointed by counsel for European claimants as legal expert on various issues of international business law and Iranian law in a number of major and complex arbitration cases, including a major investment treaty arbitration and various ICC arbitration cases. He was also appointed as sole arbitrator, counsel or legal consultant in other arbitration or litigation cases.