2023-10-24 07:28:06
A London court ruled in favor of the Nigerian government on Monday, October 23, in a long-term gas dispute which might have forced this state to pay more than 11 billion dollars (more than 10 billion euros) to an oil company .
Nigeria was in dispute with Process and Industrial Developments Limited (P&ID), a small company registered in the British Virgin Islands, commissioned in 2010 to build a state-of-the-art gas processing plant in the southeast of the country to produce electricity. But the project never saw the light of day and P&ID accused the Nigerian government of having violated the signed agreement.
In 2017, a London arbitration court awarded $6.6 billion in damages to the company, which then obtained in August 2019 the seizure of $9.6 billion (initial sum plus interest). of Nigeria’s assets, or around a fifth of the foreign currency reserves of this country of 200 million inhabitants. With interest, the sum claimed now reached more than $11 billion.
The government of former President Muhammadu Buhari, who inherited this deal concluded under his predecessor, appealed and obtained a stay of execution of the decision subject to the payment of a $200 million guarantee to P&ID. He mentioned “bribery, corruption and perjury” concerning both the initial gas agreement but also the arbitration procedure.
A “historic” judgment
On Monday, a London commercial court finally ruled in favor of Nigeria in this case. ” The decisions [d’arbitrage] were obtained by fraud”, said Judge Robin Knowles in his written judgment. This case has “unfortunately brought together a combination of examples of what some people are capable of doing for money”he emphasized: “Driven by greed and ready to resort to corruption without thinking regarding the harm their enrichment would cause to others”of which, in this case, “the Nigerian people”.
The Nigerian President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, for his part considered that it was a “historical judgment” allowing countries not to be ” taken hostage “ by private companies and corrupt officials seeking to extract money from them. “Today’s victory is not for Nigeria alone. This is a victory for our long-exploited continent and for developing countries as a whole.”declared the presidency in a press release.
At the same time, Nigeria opened its own investigation into possible corruption around this agreement and, in October 2019, two British nationals were charged with fraud and money laundering.
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