Sending of notices under VIAC’s rules
A party to an arbitral proceedings under VIAC’s rules must send its notice and other submission to VIAC which will then forward the notice and submission to the other parties to the proceeding. This is different from SIAC’s rules which allow each party to send notice and submission directly to each other with a copy to SIAC. This arrangement is not effective and could give rise to potential challenges if VIAC does not handle the sending of notices and documents correctly.
Rule 3.2 provides that VIAC will send notices and documents to the parties at the addresses provided by the parties. If a party provides VIAC with more than one address (e.g., office addresses and email addresses, or addresses of the respondent and their counsels), then it is not clear if VIAC should send notice and documents to all the addresses provided to it or VIAC only needs to send notice and documents to only one of the addresses provided to it. The wording of Rule 3.2 seems to suggest that VIAC should send notices and documents to all addresses provided to it by the parties.