A cross border team of lawyers from Squire Patton Boggs advised Paris-headquartered utility Veolia on a €1.36bn Tashkent district heating public-private partnership (PPP) project. It is Uzbekistan’s first PPP in the utilities sector and involves operation, modernization and management of the country’s largest heating network located in the nation’s capital. During the 30 year term of the affermage model project, Veolia will operate and maintain the Tashkent district heating network, fund the operating assets program and project manage public investment programs to upgrade and improve efficiencies in the network.
On 29 September 2021, after more than two years of negotiations, Veolia signed a package of project documents including a PPP agreement with Tashkent City Municipality, acting as the public partner and a government support agreement with the Government of Uzbekistan.
Tashkent City Municipality was advised by the Asian Development Bank.
Squire Patton Boggs’ project team was led by Tatiana Gotvig (Sydney) and Alexander Dolgov (Moscow) with support from a team of lawyers, including Graham Johnson, Konstantin Makarevich, Mikhail Zelensky, Poulad Berenjforoush, Roman Petrovsky and Tam Nguyen.
The team worked in close collaboration with Centil Law (Veolia’s local counsel).
This is another example of Squire Patton Boggs international expertise and multijurisdictional teams working collaboratively to support its global clients.