A Chilean arbitration tribunal has ordered Isidoro Quiroga, the previous owner of salmon-farming company Australis, and members of his family to pay USD 292 million (EUR 252 million) to Chinese seafood firm Joyvio, which currently owns the firm.
Joyvio purchased Australis from Quiroga in 2018 for USD 921 million (EUR 796 million). Following the sale, Joyvio alleged Quiroga and the board of directors hid, falsified, and adulterated critical information during the sale’s due diligence process – including what the company now deems was deliberate overproduction to inflate salmon production numbers and, therefore, the company’s valuation when it came time to negotiate a sale.
In 2023, Joyvio filed a lawsuit against Quiroga seeking USD 1.22 billion (EUR 1.05 billion) in restitution and damages and accused Quiroga and former Australis executives of fraud and unfair administration. The defendants have called the accusations “falsehoods and slander,” questioning why the accusations surfaced years after the purchase.
After more than two years of trial, the Santiago Chamber of Commerce tribunal has now issued the sentence against Quiroga for what it said was overpricing.
The figure – much lower than that requested by Joyvio – includes USD 217 million (EUR 188 million) as a base amount, in addition to some USD 75 million (EUR 64.8 million) for interest accrued since 2019. In addition, Quiroga must pay the costs of the arbitration process.
Specifically, the tribunal ordered the company Inversiones Benjamín – Quiroga’s investment firm – to pay USD 195 million (EUR 168 million) and two other investment firms related to members of Quiroga’s family to pay USD 10.9 million (EUR 9.4 million) each.
The ruling effectively rejected the buyer’s main request to annul the sales contract, and it ruled out the existence of malice on the part of the defendants. It did, however, rule that the selling party provided “incomplete” information during the sales process and that the omissions were a breach of that party’s contractual obligations.
“The sellers failed to comply with their obligations established in Clause 4.2, letter i, of the contract by incompletely declaring and guaranteeing the situation of the company, omitting relevant information related to environmental regulations,” the arbitration award states.
Sebastián Oddo and Carolina Alcalde, Joyvio's lawyers in the arbitration process, expressed their satisfaction with the ruling.
“This ruling concludes the first of the routes defined to repair the damages caused and that due justice is done,” they told local press. “At this stage, it was incumbent on Quiroga to return the overprice paid in the purchase of Australis, which, with this award, he is obliged to do.”
Inversiones Benjamín maintained Quiroga’s innocence, saying that the ruling confirmed no fraud had taken place during the sales process.
“The arbitral tribunal’s judgment rules out that there was fraud in the purchase and sale of Australis and, thus, overturns the criminal case,” it said in a statement sent to SeafoodSource. “The ruling is clear in pointing out that there was never a scam or a plan to deceive buyers here, which reaffirms our position in the criminal cases currently being processed.”
Quiroga’s investment firm further said that the arbitration ruling simply determined an adjustment in the sales price, which was not requested in the lawsuit, “related to an alleged incompleteness in a contractual declaration and guarantee – a conclusion that has no basis.” It called the decision unusual, incoherent, and contradictory, pointing out several sentences in the ruling to back up those claims, including the following:
- “The court considers that the buyers were not deceived as they proceed to buy.”
- “It is absurd to think that after a thorough analysis of the company, Joyvio did not know the production limits of the salmon industry.”
- “The buyers had access to information that there was a risk that the environmental and fisheries authority could formulate new requirements.”
- “The buyers received all the information regarding the production at that time, including the standing environmental limits, which was public information.”
“Therefore, we will petition the Court of Appeals to annul that part of the award,” the investment firm said.
Nevertheless, the ruling is the latest turn of events in criminal and civil suits and countersuits between the two parties.
In January 2025, Chile’s Prosecutor's Office accused Quiroga and former executives Martín Guiloff and Santiago Garretón of fraud and unfair administration in relation to the suit. That investigation is ongoing.
In May, Quiroga filed a lawsuit against Joyvio, accusing the company of employing threats, witness tampering, and false statements in its legal action against the businessman.
Joyvio Food, a subsidiary of Joyvio Group, completely divested from Australis in April, selling its stake to a fellow firm also under the umbrella of Joyvio Group for the symbolic price of CNY 1.00 (USD 0.14, EUR 0.12). Australis was transferred to Joyvio Premium Fresh to consider “potential strategic options” for the firm, which may include attracting new investors to enhance working capital and support future expansion plans.
Australis’s current owners have said that the previous administration had undertaken systematic salmon overproduction since 2016 at least, generating overproduction of more than 80,000 metric tons of salmonids. To rectify this, the company said it had restructured corporate governance and implemented different measures to eradicate such bad practices – the first measure being to file a self-report with environmental authorities and end the regulatory breaches detected.
Subsequently, it implemented a program to cut production from 2023 to 2027 in order to compensate for the denounced overproduction committed prior to the sale while also pursuing civil and criminal actions against those it said were “responsible for the systematic policy of overproduction and its concealment.”
The company has also run into issues with environmental courts in Chile more recently, which have taken such measures as annulling an Australis environmental permit to operate a grow-out center in the Magallanes region over alleged deficiencies in the permit’s evaluation process.
