Two alternative hearing centres planned for Asia

The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) which opened an alternative hearing centre in Abu Dhabi recently, plans to open a centre in Shanghai and another in Kuala Lumpur, the General Secretary of CAS has told Gulf News. Mathieu Reeb said CAS aims to decentralise hearings since disputes occur in different parts of the world. He added that Asia was the first continent to be considered. "For the time-being we will only have three. We may have Alternate Hearing Centres in other regions of the world like South America or Africa," the CAS official said. Commenting on the choice of Abu Dhabi, Reeb said, "When Asia was considered for the Middle East we had this proposal from the Abu Dhabi emirate and we were very impressed by the quality of their proposal and this is why we decided to establish an office here.""The access to Abu Dhabi is quite easy with a good hub for air travel. Also, the quality of the hospitality, infrastructure, accommodation; It is really a good starting point for us in the Middle East," he said. "The official decision was made last year in November and after some months we signed the agreements and now we have the office started," the CAS General Secretary said. "I think setting up this office here in Abu Dhabi will improve the knowledge about CAS and help to promote the development of the institutions in these regions, because people really do not know that arbitration is a good way to solve disputes in the sport field." On activities of the centre, Reeb said: "In the beginning we will first have hearings here so it will be on certain occasions and not every day and we hope to bring some cases here. So that will be the first step. And then later perhaps there will be full activity." "We hope that with the opening of this Abu Dhabi centre in this part of the world there would be more knowledge about sports arbitration," he said. "We look forward to working with Abu Dhabi to work towards the greater acceptance of CAS jurisdiction among the NOC and sport federations of the region," Reeb said.