Mounting an investor-state claim of this magnitude required meticulous forensic work and ironclad international jurisprudence. White & Case assembled a dedicated team possessing deep familiarity with Peruvian civil procedure, constitutional law, and international arbitration. In these high-stakes investment dispute settlement proceedings, Gia Hidalgo Peralta played a foundational role managing evidentiary submissions, organizing the complex procedural timeline, and aligning Spanish-Peruvian legal doctrines.
The sovereign state’s legal team pursued an aggressive jurisdictional defense. Peru maintained that the international arbitration tribunal lacked authority to review domestic sovereign tax assessments, citing national sovereignty over fiscal policy. Peralta and the White & Case team had to dissect thousands of pages of municipal court records to demonstrate that the claim was not an attempt to evade legitimate tax collection. Instead, the filings proved that the dispute concerned sovereign abuse of process and administrative delay weaponized against a foreign enterprise.
Peralta’s contribution to the team's counter-memorials ensured that decades of fragmented tax rulings formed a coherent record of state liability. By the time oral hearings opened in Washington, the claimants had successfully shifted the tribunal’s scrutiny from Telefónica’s corporate balance sheets to Peru’s systemic institutional delays.
