Oman - Enforcement of Money Judgments

In the Sultanate of Oman, the principal judicial organs likely to be concerned with this topic are the Sharia Courts and the Commercial Court. The jurisdiction of the former is founded on the Holy Quran, and is in principle all-pervasive. It dates back to the reception of Islam in the country and is largely unregulated by modern written legislation, save as to personal status matters. The jurisdiction of the latter body, the Commercial Court, is in respect of commercial matters, broadly as defined in Napoleonic civilian doctrine, and is regulated by modern legislation in the form of sultani decrees.

Where a money judgment has been rendered outside Oman and where the judgment creditor seeks satisfaction of it from persons or assets within the jurisdiction of the Omani judicial authorities, the preponderant likelihood is that these will be judgments in commercial matters, and this is reflected in what is said below.

As regards the present attitude of the Government of the Sultanate to the enforcement of foreign money judgments, it should be said that the Government is in general responsive to considerations of international comity, but on this particular topic it has not announced any official policy. Oman was one of the original signatories to the Riyadh Arab Agreement on Judicial Co-operation of 1983, which deals with the question of the enforcement of judgments, although its orientation is primarily in the field of criminal law; but no ratifying decree has been gazetted. Oman is party to the Arab Gulf Co-operation Council Protocol of 1995 relating inter alia to the enforcement of judgments rendered in other member states.

Historically the judges of the Commercial Court had taken the view that, in the absence of specific legislative sanction, they were competent only to enforce judgments rendered by their own court. Where there was a treaty obligation to enforce, such sanction was present in the sultani decree ratifying the treaty. Otherwise, in relation to foreign judgments generally, legislative sanction was provided only in 1997, when the Rules for the Hearing of Actions at Law and Applications for Arbitration before the Commercial Court (“the Rules of Procedure”). were extended to include a chapter dealing with the enforcement of foreign judgments. (For text, see Appendix I below). The conditions under which the Commercial Court will now enforce a foreign judgment are relatively stringent. Two requirements invite particular attention. One is reciprocity of treatment: the foreign country whose courts rendered the judgment sought to be enforced must itself provide for the enforcement of Oman judgments under like conditions. The other requirement is that the Omani courts themselves must have been without competence in the dispute in question.

Where a creditor under a foreign money judgment wishes to enforce it in Oman, and can neither found on an enforcement treaty nor satisfy the conditions of articles 119 and 120 of the Rules of Procedure, he will have to institute de novo proceedings in Oman, adducing the foreign judgment, if appropriate, as evidence in support of his claim.