In a case that a judge at London’s High Court said best illustrated the effects of greed and corruption, Nigeria celebrated a historic win on Monday after successfully challenging an $11 billion damages bill for a failed gas project.
The most populous nation in Africa had already been told to pay Process & Industrial Developments (P&ID), a business with its headquarters in the British Virgin Islands, equivalent to around a third of its foreign exchange reserves.
However, Judge Robin Knowles determined that P&ID had concealed the fact that it had paid bribes to a member of the Nigerian oil ministry in connection with the 2010 gas contract when it later brought Nigeria to arbitration over the transaction breakdown.
According to Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, the ruling is a setback for unethical business practices and the exploitation of Africa.
In a press release, he declared that “economic conspiracies between private firms and solely corrupt officials will no longer hold nation states hostage.”
The decision significantly boosts the greatest economy in Africa, which is struggling with increasing debt, soaring inflation, and unemployment.
According to the anti-corruption advocacy group Spotlight on Corruption, “a tainted arbitral award that was built on bribes and lies has held hostage the economic prospects of an entire country.”
After its 20-year contract to build and run a gas processing plant in southern Nigeria fell through, an arbitration panel awarded P&ID $6.6 billion in 2017 as compensation for lost profits.
The amount has subsequently increased to nearly $11 billion, including interest, ten times the nation’s 2019 health budget.
“DRIVEN BY GREED”
Nigeria’s attorneys, however, petitioned the court to reverse the decision, claiming that P&ID had bought the contract and corrupted the nation’s attorneys to get secret information during the arbitration. P&ID refuted this and charged institutional failure on the part of Nigeria.
The case, according to Knowles, demonstrated what some individuals would do for money, “driven by greed and prepared to use corruption, giving no thought to what their enrichment would mean in terms of harm for others.” Nevertheless, he accepted Nigeria’s challenge.
The court announced a second hearing to determine whether to immediately revoke the $11 billion award or send the matter back to arbitration.
P&ID’s attorneys stated that the company was dissatisfied and examined its options.
In a rare scolding, the court stated that two British attorneys had misbehaved out of avarice since they stood to collect enormous sums of money if Nigeria was made to pay the $11 billion or more debt.
In contrast to Seamus Andrew, who represented P&ID throughout the arbitration, Trevor Burke, a renowned criminal lawyer and the nephew of P&ID’s co-founder, would have gotten $850 million.
During the arbitration, both parties got private papers from Nigeria that they were not authorized to read, the judgment ruled. He added that they were “indefensible” in their silence and failure to surrender the records.
They did so “because of the money they hoped to make” and provided false testimony about it, Knowles continued, directing his decision to authorities overseeing legal standards.
Burke and Andrew stated in separate comments that they did not agree with the judge’s remarks and thought the regulators would clear them.
