On October 30, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (Cas) announced that a panel had upheld an appeal from the Russian Ice Hockey Federation (RIHF). The decision means that Russia, which has been banned from international ice hockey since the country invaded Ukraine in 2022, will once again be allowed to play in the ice hockey world championship.
The dispute between the RIHF and the International Ice Hockey Federation IIHF was decided by a panel consisting of three judges. The chairman of the panel was the Italian Giulio Palermo and the other two were the Egyptian Ismail Selim and the British Mark Hovell. All three are highly qualified lawyers.
Swiss site Inside Paradeplatz was the first to report that chairman Giulio Palermo, who was appointed by Cas, attended a conference in Russia about a month before he was involved in making the decision on the Ice Hockey World Cup. The news has given rise to scandalous headlines in several media.
Palermo is on the list of speakers from the RIAC Russian Arbitration Conference at the luxury hotel The Carlton in Moscow on September 22 this year. Along with four other speakers, he took part in a conversation about who shapes the rules of arbitration and whether the framework is a "product of Western legal traditions".
- I think it is quite common for Cas judges to participate in seminars and training. That doesn't make them badass: that they have participated in that type of training seminar in some country, says the Swedish former Cas judge Conny Jörneklint.
Jörneklint tells us that Cas judges must testify when they are assigned a case.
- Then I have to tell you about relations with the parties and whether I have had any type of assignment for the parties. I have to report all the things that could mean shit. Then there is a trial and it is done by the board of Cas.
Is this about speaking at a conference in Moscow something you had declared when you were a Cas judge?
- Report it, I think you do, but I don't see that it's an object of criticism.
Palermo's Egyptian panel colleague Ismail Selim has also spoken in Moscow. He was there in May 2025 as a representative of the Egyptian arbitration organization Cairo Regional Center for International Commercial Arbitration (CRCICA). The organization provides various services for arbitration.
Selim held the role of director and thus led CRCICA between January 1, 2017 and December 31, 2025.
To the seminar in Moscow 2025, CRCICA invited Russian lawyers, investors and "institutional stakeholders". The invitation stated that the Egyptian organization was committed to "deepening cooperation with Russian institutions, arbitrators and business stakeholders".
Since January 2026, Selim works as an arbitrator for his own company. When CRCICA announced that he would be stepping down as director, the organization wrote about what he achieved during his nine years in the role.
One example was that the organization received the status of a permanent arbitration institution in Russia, which gives a greater mandate to work with cases that belong in Russia. That they received that status, CRCICA told on its website five days after the seminar in Moscow in May 2025.
- I think that what you are now mentioning could rather be the subject of criticism than going and lecturing, says Conny Jörneklint.
Cas confirms that it was the Russian Ice Hockey Federation that nominated Ismail Selim to the panel, while the IIHF nominated Briton Mark Hovell.
A Cas judgment cannot be appealed on the merits itself. However, it can be appealed to the Swiss Supreme Court if it concerns any errors in the process, such as that the parties have not been treated equally.
In an email to DN, Cas' communications manager Vanessa Tracey writes that a trip to Russia is not something the judges have to tell about:
"Cas judges have no obligation to report trips that are independent of Cas cases and that have no connection to the parties or the sport involved in the dispute."
In addition, Cas tells us that Giulio Palermo received the case on his desk on October 9. So he did not know that he would be working with it when he traveled to Russia in September.
There is no answer regarding Ismail Selim's work in CRCICA in the email. DN has also sought Giulio Palermo and Ismail Selim, but neither has responded.
According to the Czech site Isport, Palermo distances himself from the reporting in an email where he also writes that he will take legal action to protect his rights and reputation. There is no evidence that Briton Mark Hovell, who was the third judge on the Cas panel, has any similar connection to Russia.
When Cas announced the decision that the IIHF must allow Russia to play the Ice Hockey World Cup again, the arbitral tribunal wrote that the IIHF did not have a strong enough basis to suspend Russia for security reasons, which was what the IIHF was essentially referring to.
The decision has been followed by protests in the ice hockey world and several nations - including Sweden - have said they will not compete in games against Russia. During Tuesday, Russia announced that the country is putting hard against hard.
- We have initiated aggressive legal action on the orders of Vladimir Putin, said sports minister Mikhail Degtyarov, according to the state-run Russian news agency Tass.
