On 2 April 2019, the Secretary for Justice of Hong Kong and the Vice-president of the Supreme People’s Court of Mainland China signed the Arrangement Concerning Mutual Assistance in Court-ordered Interim Measures in Aid of Arbitral Proceedings by the Courts of the Mainland and of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) (the “Arrangement”). After the commencement of the Arrangement, parties to arbitral proceedings in Hong Kong can make an application for interim measures to the Mainland courts before the arbitral award is made.
The aims of the Arrangement are to prevent one of the parties from deliberately destroying the evidence or transferring the property, and to ensure that the arbitral proceedings can be carried out effectively. Therefore, the interim measures covered by the Arrangement include (1) property preservation, (2) evidence preservation and (3) conduct preservation in the Mainland.
