In the spring of 2020, a Spanish gas company holding a $2 billion arbitration award against Egypt went to a federal court in Manhattan for help collecting it. Unión Fenosa Gas wanted records from the Depository Trust Company, the New York institution that, it said, sat in the chain of payments on Egypt’s bonds. It planned to use them in England, where it hoped to seize money Egypt would use to pay its bondholders. On May 29, 2020, Judge Paul A. Engelmayer called the question “relatively close” and let a narrowed document subpoena stand. But Egypt appealed, and in February 2021, with Unión Fenosa’s consent, as Egypt told the appeals court, his order was vacated and the case dismissed as moot.
The issue: Once an arbitration is over, can the winner use Section 1782 to gather evidence for a foreign court case that collects the award? Judge Engelmayer said yes, on that record, because the English court still had questions to decide, including whether Egypt’s money could be seized under English law. Two years later the Supreme Court held that private arbitration panels are not covered at all. Court proceedings tied to an arbitration can still qualify, but only when the foreign court has something left to decide.
A $2 billion award and a bond payment chain
Unión Fenosa Gas, S.A. (“UFG”), whose listed parents were the Spanish utility Naturgy and the Italian energy company Eni, won its award on August 31, 2018, from a tribunal formed under a Spain–Egypt investment treaty and the ICSID Convention, the World Bank–linked system for investor-state disputes. According to its petition, Egypt refused to pay, and in December 2018 the Commercial Court in England registered the award with the force of an English judgment.
UFG then filed in New York. Judge Engelmayer’s order recounts that UFG alleged DTC was “an agent in the payment chain between Egypt and the holders of notes” Egypt had issued, and that UFG hoped “to execute funds belonging to Egypt” through the English courts. It asked for documents and a deposition. The judge granted the request without hearing from Egypt on April 13, 2020. Egypt moved to quash both subpoenas on April 29.
The law, and what counts as a proceeding
Section 1782 is a short federal law that lets someone involved in a case abroad ask an American judge to order people and companies here to hand over documents or testify.
The evidence must be “for use in a proceeding in a foreign or international tribunal.” Egypt argued that the English enforcement case was no such proceeding. In Euromepa, S.A. v. R. Esmerian, Inc., 154 F.3d 24 (2d Cir. 1998), the Second Circuit had refused discovery for a French bankruptcy case because there “nothing is being adjudicated; the already extant judgment is merely being enforced.”
The ruling
Egypt’s English-law expert described a common collection tool, the third party debt order, which the judge said the declaration “attempts to paint as perfunctory.” The judge read it differently. The declaration itself said that before a final order there is usually a hearing at which “the Court will hear argument from the parties.” UFG noted that even without Egypt in the room it would have to address whether the targeted assets were “executable under English law.” The judge wrote: “This anticipatory dimension of UFG’s filing, too, has an adjudicative quality.”
The decision is Union Fenosa Gas, S.A. v. Depository Trust Co., No. 20 Misc. 188 (S.D.N.Y. May 29, 2020). The judge also found the English case within reasonable contemplation, because it was “ongoing” and the documents would “be used at some stage” of it. He then cut the document requests down to the agreements and records about the bond payments, declined Egypt’s request to limit them to documents in the United States, and quashed the deposition subpoena as “clearly unnecessary.”
Two years later, private arbitration was shut out
On June 13, 2022, a unanimous Supreme Court, in an opinion by Justice Barrett, decided ZF Automotive US, Inc. v. Luxshare, Ltd., 596 U.S. 619 (2022). The Court held that “Private adjudicatory bodies do not fall within §1782.” A tribunal qualifies only if it “exercises governmental authority” conferred by one nation or by several.
The Court left one opening: “None of this forecloses the possibility that sovereigns might imbue an ad hoc arbitration panel with official authority.” The test is “whether the nations intended that the ad hoc panel exercise governmental authority.” In Webuild S.p.A. v. WSP USA Inc., 108 F.4th 138 (2d Cir. 2024), an Italian company from the consortium that built the Panama Canal’s third set of locks sought discovery for its ICSID treaty arbitration against Panama, and the Second Circuit held that “§ 1782 discovery is not authorized” for it. UFG’s award had come from an ICSID tribunal too. UFG, though, had sought the evidence for the English court, not the arbitrators.
Where courts still allow it
Courts still allow discovery for a foreign enforcement case when the foreign court has questions left to decide beyond enforcing the judgment. In February 2022, in Federal Republic of Nigeria v. VR Advisory Services, Ltd., 25 F.4th 99 (2d Cir. 2022), the Second Circuit described Euromepa as “fundamentally a case about mootness.” Days later, in In re Application of YS GM Marfin II LLC, 2022 WL 624291 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 2, 2022), Judge Paul G. Gardephe quoted that decision, relied on the UFG order and held that “there is no blanket ban on Section 1782 assistance in connection with post-judgment proceedings.” He also recorded that Judge P. Kevin Castel had adopted the same reasoning in a related UFG petition, No. 20-mc-171.
Two Brazilian debt collection cases went opposite ways on whether a Brazilian court still had something to decide. In In re Ibiuna Crédito Gestão de Recursos Ltda., 2024 WL 1077559 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 14, 2024), creditors pursuing notes from Kenneth Steven Pope, the owner of SouthRock Group, whose companies included Starbucks Brazil, failed on their two São Paulo collection suits. Magistrate Judge Robyn F. Tarnofsky wrote that they had “identified no issue the São Paulo State Court still needs to decide,” though she found other Brazilian proceedings sufficient. In In re Application of Banco BTG Pactual S.A., 2025 WL 1079221 (S.D.N.Y. Apr. 9, 2025), Judge Analisa Torres refused to vacate an order she had granted, agreeing with the applicants that the facts were “more akin to those of Union Fenosa than those of Ibiuna,” because the Brazilian courts still had to decide whether the assets found would “qualify for debt satisfaction under Brazilian law.”
Even in collection cases, the statute gathers evidence; it does not seize assets. In In re Clerici, 481 F.3d 1324 (11th Cir. 2007), a Panamanian court’s request was allowed because it sought only the debtor’s “sworn answers to questions regarding his assets and other financial matters.” For tracing assets, see Tracing Assets With Section 1782.
What happened to Union Fenosa
On June 29, 2020, Egypt appealed. On February 2, 2021, the Second Circuit granted Egypt’s motion, which Egypt said UFG consented to, vacating the order and directing dismissal as moot. Judge Engelmayer dismissed the case the next day.
The docket does not say why the case became moot. Two months earlier, on December 1, 2020, Eni announced agreements with Egypt and Naturgy providing for “the amicable settlement of the pending disputes of Union Fenosa Gas.” The order was vacated, but as YS GM Marfin and Banco BTG show, judges have kept citing its reasoning. For the full framework, see A Practical Guide to Bringing and Defending Section 1782 Applications.
How this page cites the filings
The account of the UFG case comes from the orders of May 29, 2020, and February 3, 2021 (ECF Nos. 22 and 25), UFG’s memorandum (ECF No. 2), and the docket text of ECF Nos. 7, 8, 23 and 24, read in free copies in CourtListener’s RECAP archive. ZF Automotive was read in the Supreme Court’s slip opinion; the other decisions were read in full on Midpage, except VR Advisory, quoted as YS GM Marfin quotes it. The Eni statement was read on Eni’s website. Docket: CourtListener RECAP docket, entries from April 8, 2020 (entry 1), last entry 26 (February 23, 2021), pulled November 2, 2026. PACER was not checked.