Decision ID: 001082
In October 1999 the 1971 Fund Executive Committee and the 1992 Fund Executive Committee, in private sessions pursuant to Rule 12 of the Rules of Procedure at which only the delegations of Member States of the 1971 Fund and the 1992 Fund were present, considered whether the 1971 Fund and the 1992 Fund respectively should take recovery actions against the Russian Martitime Register of Shipping under whose classification rules the Nakhodka was subject at the time of the incident. The two Committees recognised that litigation against classification societies was difficult, due to the special role that they played in international shipping. The Committees concluded, however, that the Russian Register had failed to ensure that the Nakhodka met its requirements and that this failure was causative to the incident. The two Committees therefore decided that the 1971 Fund and the 1992 Fund should both initiate recovery actions against the Russian Register.