Federal Government, on Monday, won its case against Process and Industrial Developments as the Business and Property Court in London stopped the enforcement of the $11bn arbitration award in favour of P&ID against Nigeria.
This development is coming after five years of serious legal battle.
Justice Robert Knowles, in his judgement held that the process through which P&ID secured a contract in 2010 to build a gas processing plant in Calabar, Cross River State, was fraudulently obtained.
Justice Knowles upheld Nigeria’s prayer that the judgment should be quashed.
The judge said in his ruling, “In the circumstances and for the reasons I have sought to describe and explain. Nigeria succeeds in its challenge under section 68. I have not accepted all of Nigeria’s allegations. But the Awards were obtained by fraud and the Awards were and the way in which they were procured was contrary to public policy.
“What happened in this case is very serious indeed, and it is important that section 68 has been available to maintain the rule of law.”
Nigeria has been involved in a legal fight with P&ID since the company accused the Nigerian Government of botching a deal by its failure to provide gas to them.
In 2017, Nigeria suffered a &6.6billion judgement debt when the arbitration tribunal ordered the country to pay P&ID with interest to start counting from March 2013.
But Nigeria had argued that it was a victim of bribery and deception in the controversial gas deal.
In its claim, P&ID said Nigeria violated the terms of its agreement by failing to provide gas for the power plant it wanted to build for the country.
Former president Goodluck Jonathan-led administration reached an out-of-tribunal agreement for the payment of $850 million and passed on disbursement to the administration of President Buhari.
But Buhari baulked at the idea of paying the negotiated sum, set aside the settlement agreement, and challenged the enforcement of the award before the English Commercial Court. The London court added $2.4 billion in interest, making it $9bn.
The judge granted Nigeria’s request for a stay on any asset seizures while its legal challenge is pending but ordered it to pay $200 million to the court within 60 days to ensure the stay. It also must pay some court costs to P&ID within 14 days.
The original decision on August 16 converted an arbitration award held by P&ID to a legal judgment, which would allow the British Virgin Islands-based firm to try to seize international assets.
In 2018, Nigeria began investigating the company through the EFCC and found evidence of two bank transfers totalling $20,000 made by Dublin-based Industrial Consultants (International) Ltd. — part of the P&ID group of companies—to Grace Taiga, a Nigerian government lawyer who oversaw the award of the gas plant contract.