Today’s Chambers Chatter stays with 4-5 Gray’s Inn Square, from which Wendy Miller KC also acts. She is not the subject today. Wendy can remain on the seating plan. This one is about Paul Cohen, Elisabeth Mason, the Sulu arbitration, and a US$14.92bn award that walked into the international courts wearing cufflinks and left with the arbitrator convicted.
Paul Cohen, Elisabeth Mason And The International Tenant Corridor
4-5 Gray’s Inn Square lists Paul Cohen and Elisabeth Mason as international tenants.
That is the doorway.
This is not a conspiracy. It is not a whisper from the legal toilets. Nobody needs an anonymous forum post written by a man with six accounts and a grievance against punctuation. Their names sit on the chambers’ own barristers page, under the polite heading of International Tenants.
Polite headings are useful. They tell you where to start digging.
Paul Cohen’s name then appears in Malaysia’s official Sulu-case timeline. In September 2019, according to that timeline, Malaysia’s Attorney General sent a letter to the claimants’ legal representative, Paul Cohen, offering to recommence payment of cession monies under the 1878 Agreement. The same official timeline says that letter was sent without the authority of the Malaysian Government.
That is not TCAP throwing confetti at a rumour. Malaysia’s own Sulu-case site puts Cohen into the file.
Elisabeth Mason’s role should be treated more carefully. She is listed by 4-5 as an international tenant alongside Cohen. TCAP is not presently asserting that Mason was counsel in the Sulu arbitration unless and until the source pile is nailed down. Her relevance here is the chambers corridor: the international tenant shelf, the arbitration branding, and the way 4-5 Gray’s Inn Square now provides the public-facing doorway into names orbiting one of the dirtiest-looking arbitration blow-ups of the decade.
Today’s target is not a single barrister’s private sin.
It is the machine.
Paul Cohen And The Claim With A Victorian Skeleton
The Sulu case begins where international legal horror often begins: with an old agreement, a dead empire, disputed history, and modern lawyers arriving with calculators.
Malaysia’s official timeline says the 1878 Agreement involved the Sultan of Sulu, Baron de Overbeck, and Alfred Dent, with the Sultan ceding in perpetuity land, territory and sovereign rights in North Borneo for an annual payment. It then traces the long chain through British North Borneo, Malaysia, Sabah, annual payments, and the later cessation of payments after the 2013 armed invasion of Sabah.
By 2017, the claimants, described by Malaysia as self-proclaimed heirs to the Sultan of Sulu, had approached the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office alleging breach of the 1878 Agreement. Malaysia’s timeline says the FCO dismissed the claim.
After that, the arbitration machinery started warming itself.
In 2018, the claimants notified an intent to initiate arbitration in Spain, despite Malaysia’s timeline saying there was no arbitration clause in the 1878 Agreement. One year later, the High Court of Justice of Madrid appointed Dr Gonzalo Stampa as arbitrator.
That is the sort of legal set-up that does not enter the room quietly. It arrives with trunks, translators, funders, experts, jurisdiction arguments, historic maps, and a face like it has already billed six figures before breakfast.
Ancient agreement. Modern enforcement. State assets. Alleged heirs. Arbitration clause disputed at the root.
Some files knock.
This one picked the lock and asked for US$14.92bn.
The US$14.92bn Sulu Arbitration Award
In February 2022, Malaysia’s timeline says Stampa issued a final award in France worth US$14.92bn against Malaysia. Malaysia says the award was issued in defiance of court orders in France, Spain and Malaysia, and that it completely rejected the award and did not recognise its legitimacy.
US$14.92bn is not a legal claim. It is a weather event.
That is the kind of number that makes finance ministries sit up, oil companies check the exits, and international arbitration lawyers start speaking in the low, expensive register usually reserved for private dining rooms and people who say “commercial reality” while touching the stem of a glass.
Here is where the system gets ugly.
Arbitration sells itself as sleek. Private. Efficient. Expert. A clean alternative to national courts. Less blood on the carpet, more leather chairs, better coffee.
Then a file like this comes along and the leather chair starts making noises.
The public record, as presented by Malaysia, becomes a tour of legal ambush points: Spain, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, enforcement attempts, stays, annulment applications, diplomatic property, Petronas-linked assets, procedural fights, and a final award big enough to be mistaken for a national trauma.
The machine did not just print an award.
It printed a hostage note in legal font.
Gonzalo Stampa And The Arbitrator Problem
The name at the centre of the legal blast radius is Gonzalo Stampa.
Malaysia’s timeline says the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid revoked Stampa’s appointment in June 2021 and instructed him to terminate the proceedings. According to the same timeline, Stampa disregarded the ruling. In October 2021, the High Court of Madrid determined that Stampa’s preliminary award on jurisdiction was null and void. After that, Malaysia says he moved the purported seat of arbitration from Madrid to Paris.
Read that again slowly.
Appointment revoked. Told to stop. Preliminary jurisdiction award null and void. Seat moved to Paris.
This is not process humming along. It is a forklift reversing through the loading bay while everyone in the office keeps calling it logistics.
By December 2023, Malaysia’s timeline says the Madrid Criminal Court found Stampa guilty of contempt of court. He received a six-month prison sentence and a one-year prohibition from acting as an arbitrator.
In May 2024, the Madrid Court of Appeal upheld that conviction and confirmed that Stampa knowingly and wilfully disobeyed clear rulings and orders of the Madrid High Court of Justice. According to Malaysia’s timeline, the Spanish Supreme Court dismissed Stampa’s cassation appeal in October 2025 and upheld the conviction in full.
There is the legal profession’s dinner jacket, caught in the machinery.
No misunderstanding is needed. Nobody has to dress it up as a complex procedural divergence. A contempt conviction was upheld.
That does not make Paul Cohen criminal. It does not make Elisabeth Mason criminal. TCAP is not saying that. The conviction is Stampa’s.
But if your arbitration file ends with the arbitrator convicted, barred, and the award later annulled, nobody gets to stroll back to the champagne reception pretending the canapés were the problem.
The Sulu Enforcement Tour
The Sulu file did not stay politely in one drawer.
The claimants attempted to enforce the awards in Luxembourg in July 2022. By January 2023, Luxembourg interim relief had gone in Malaysia’s favour and bank attachments were lifted. June 2023 brought another problem for the claimants, when the Hague Court of Appeal denied their petition to enforce the final award, citing the absence of an arbitration clause in the original pact and the French stay rendering the claim unenforceable in the Netherlands.
France added its own layer. Malaysia’s timeline records a stay of execution, applications to annul, arguments over recognition, and disputes over Malaysian diplomatic properties in Paris. It says a French court annulled judicial authorisation to register a statutory mortgage against Malaysian diplomatic buildings, and that the claimants later withdrew from seizure over three Malaysian-owned diplomatic properties.
This is the point where the arbitration brochure should be placed in evidence and cross-examined.
Because what does the public see?
This was not neutral efficiency. It was not sleek expert resolution. Nobody looking at the public record would mistake it for a tidy private dispute handled by grown-ups in quiet rooms.
The public sees alleged heirs, a dead sultanate, a colonial agreement, a US$14.92bn award, court orders ignored by the arbitrator according to Spain, enforcement attempts against state-linked assets and diplomatic property, and years of legal trench warfare across Europe.
If this is the elite alternative to litigation, someone should check what they are putting in the minibar.
Paul Cohen And The Paris Trapdoor
Then came 9 December 2025.
Malaysia’s official timeline says the Paris Court of Appeal annulled in its entirety the purported final award issued by Gonzalo Stampa on 28 February 2022. The same timeline says the court held that Stampa lacked jurisdiction to issue the award, found that no valid arbitration agreement existed that could bind Malaysia, and ordered the Sulu claimants to pay Malaysia €200,000 in costs.
That is not a haircut.
It is decapitation by appellate judgment.
The US$14.92bn creature did not die nobly. No bow was taken. No dignified exit followed. According to Malaysia’s case site, Paris pulled the jurisdictional floor out from under it and left the claimants with a costs order.
No valid arbitration agreement that could bind Malaysia.
Stampa lacked jurisdiction.
Award annulled in full.
Three phrases. One body bag. Headed paper, not sirens.
That is what makes this a Chambers Chatter file.
International arbitration loves the language of sophistication. Seat. Jurisdiction. Enforcement. Recognition. Award. Stay. Exequatur. Tribunal. Claimants. Sovereign assets. Costs.
Strip away the perfume and this file says something much colder: a claim worth nearly US$15bn travelled through the legal bloodstream for years before the system finally admitted the heart may never have been connected.
4-5 Gray’s Inn Square’s Arbitration Shelf
Back to 4-5 Gray’s Inn Square.
The chambers lists International Arbitration as an area of expertise. It lists Paul Cohen and Elisabeth Mason as international tenants. Cohen appears in Malaysia’s official timeline as the claimants’ legal representative. The Sulu file then rolls through a story involving a disputed arbitration clause, an award of US$14.92bn, court resistance across Europe, a convicted arbitrator, and a final award that Malaysia says the Paris Court of Appeal annulled entirely.
That is the map.
TCAP does not need to claim 4-5 ran the arbitration. No claim is made here that Mason was personally involved in the case. This article does not allege Cohen committed misconduct. The record is enough without giving the lawyers a toy objection to chew on.
The point is institutional.
Prestige chambers love proximity when the brochure is warm. International tenants. Global expertise. Arbitration. Cross-border disputes. Sophisticated work. The language of people who bill in calm voices.
Fine.
Then proximity cuts both ways.
When an international-tenant corridor leads to a name sitting inside one of the most extraordinary arbitration collapses in recent memory, the corridor gets named. If chambers sells the aura, it can live with the lighting.
Wendy Miller KC Can Sit This One Out
And yes, Wendy Miller KC acts from 4-5 Gray’s Inn Square too.
She is not the story today. Not directly. She remains one of those recurring names in the wider Thompson legal orbit, the kind of professional overlap that makes a seating plan start looking like a disclosure exercise.
But today is not about Wendy.
This one belongs to the international arbitration end of the building. Colder wine. Better suits. Bigger numbers. Ancient claims converted into modern weapons while everyone keeps a straight face because the invoices demand it.
Dennis O’Riordan gave Chambers Chatter the fake-CV barrister.
Oliver White gave it client money and “all the same freedoms”.
Robert Griffiths KC gave it the mansion, the damp, and caveat emptor with a service charge.
Paul Cohen and Elisabeth Mason give it the arbitration corridor.
At the far end of that corridor sits US$14.92bn, a convicted arbitrator, and a final award lying on the floor with a Paris appeal stamp through its chest.
The Machine Is The Scandal
The legal profession is obsessed with individual blame because individual blame is tidy.
One barrister is tidy. A regulator finding is tidy. A single sanction is tidy. The profession likes a bad apple wrapped in procedural tissue and carried discreetly out of the dining room.
The Sulu file is not tidy.
It is a machine story.
Lawyers, funders, alleged heirs, state officials, courts, arbitral seats, enforcement targets, diplomatic property, national sovereignty, colonial paperwork, old payments, new money, and a final award so large it should have come with weather warnings.
In a machine story, the question is not only who pressed the button.
The question is why the machine had that button in the first place.
How does a disputed 1878 arrangement become a US$14.92bn enforcement campaign? Why did the arbitrator keep going after Spanish courts moved against him? What kept enforcement efforts moving while courts were chewing through jurisdictional objections? And why does international arbitration get marketed as elegant when the public record can read like someone laundering a landmine through a PDF?
Those questions are not libel. They are not conspiracy. Calling them a tantrum from the cheap seats would be too convenient.
This is what happens when the paperwork stops behaving.
The File With Cufflinks
The best scandals do not always arrive drunk, shouting, and dragging a police cordon behind them.
Some arrive in cufflinks.
They arrive as appointments, awards, enforcement applications, stays, appeals, costs orders, chambers profiles, official timelines, professional bios, and polite language arranged over a table like cutlery before service.
The Sulu arbitration file is that kind of scandal.
It does not need a tabloid soundtrack. It has a better instrument: official chronology.
Paul Cohen appears in Malaysia’s timeline as the claimants’ legal representative. 4-5 Gray’s Inn Square lists Cohen and Elisabeth Mason as international tenants. Stampa issued the US$14.92bn award. Spanish courts moved against him. Malaysia’s timeline says the Madrid Criminal Court convicted him, the Madrid Court of Appeal upheld it, and the Spanish Supreme Court later upheld it in full. The Paris Court of Appeal then, according to Malaysia’s official site, annulled the final award entirely.
That is not a little procedural wobble.
It is a table collapsing under the tasting menu.
The Award Leaves In A Box
There is a simple way to read this.
A nearly US$15bn arbitration award was built on contested foundations, carried across jurisdictions, aimed at sovereign assets, defended by the language of legal process, and ultimately, according to Malaysia’s official case site, annulled because the arbitrator lacked jurisdiction and no valid arbitration agreement existed that could bind Malaysia.
Meanwhile, the arbitrator ended up with a contempt conviction and a ban from acting as an arbitrator for a year.
That is the file.
This is not rumour. It is not pub talk. No “sources say” fog is needed. Names, dates, courts, money, orders, reversals.
4-5 Gray’s Inn Square can keep the polished arbitration page. Let the profession keep calling this rarefied work. Funders can keep whatever spreadsheets they use when history becomes an asset class. As for the chambers corridor, it can keep its brass plaque and its international tenant shelf.
TCAP will keep hold of the receipt.
Because sometimes the loudest thing in the room is not an allegation.
It is the official timeline.
Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project