“Nigeria is peddling a conspiracy theory more suited for internet chatrooms than a London court room. The latest wild allegations now target a wide range of officials, claiming that the then-Petroleum Minister who signed the agreement with P&ID, multiple other Nigerian officials (including other cabinet-level ministers), and even Nigeria’s own lawyers in the arbitration were all conspiring with P&ID”.
“Nigeria has bet everything on a narrative of enormous scandal, apparently hoping that the scale and intrigue of its conspiracy theory will distract attention from its utter lack of factual support—despite Nigeria’s best efforts to manufacture evidence through threats, intimidation and state coercion targeted at individuals linked to P&ID. No one who believes in human rights or the rule of law should take the Nigerian Government at its word.”
With the above quotes sent to THE BLAST NEWS, a spokesperson for Process and Industrial Development Limited (P&ID) summarised today’s court proceedings in London, where Nigeria is battling the company to upturn $9.6 billion judgement debt awarded against the country.
The Federal Government on Tuesday and Wednesday took major steps to upturn the $9.6 billion judgment debt awarded against it in favour of Process and Industrial Development Limited (P&ID) by a United Kingdom (UK) court.
The two-day hearing in London court, which ended today is an opportunity for Nigeria to ask for more time to appeal arbitration award, an amount that is more than the country’s income from oil last year.
Nigeria wants more time to pursue its accusations that the 2010 gas-supply contract with Process & Industrial Developments Ltd. was a sham. Last year, a British judge upheld the arbitration award P&ID won in 2017.
Nigeria had applied to U.S. courts in March seeking documents from 10 banks, including Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., in a bid to prove its corruption allegations. P&ID denies any wrongdoing, and argues that Nigeria missed its window to appeal.
“It is very unusual in a fraud case to discover a single smoking gun,” Mark Howard, Nigeria’s lawyer, said Monday on the first morning of a two-day hearing. “By its very nature, fraud is conducted in secret,” which makes it hard to detect and justifies an extension, he said.
Nigeria’s lawyers are seeking another hearing for the judge to decide whether misconduct has taken place, and whether it justifies overturning the contract.
“This case is an affront to decency–on any view this is obviously an eye watering amount of money. The arbitration agreement in the gas sales and purchase agreement was an integral part of the fraud,” Howard said.
Evidence of P&ID’s “highly orchestrated scam” had only recently come to light, Nigerian Attorney General Abubakar Malami said in a statement.
Nigeria lawyers say they have uncovered alleged bribes to government officials and their family members dating back to 2009.
“There is good reason to believe that ministers at the highest level were involved in a corrupt scheme to steal money from Nigeria,” Malami said in court filings submitted on March 24.
P&ID, a British Virgin Islands-registered firm, alleges that the Nigerian government invented the fraud allegations to avoid paying its legitimate penalty. P&ID’s spokesmen in London didn’t immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment.
Nigeria would still have options for appealing should it lose in the London court.
In an earlier statement, P&ID explained that in December 2019, Nigeria had applied to have the arbitration award set aside in the UK, claiming that the underlying agreement is tainted by fraud and corruption. The claim had been brought years out of time (the arbitration award was made in 2017 and English law usually only permits such challenges if brought within 28 days after an award is issued), meaning Nigeria needs permission to proceed with its application, which is the purpose of the hearing.
P&ID said that while Nigeria, under Attorney General Malami’s watch, had the right to challenge the arbitration award in February 2017, it did not do so until after it successfully won the right to enforce the Arbitration Award in August 2019 decision, a decision Nigeria is also appealing.
At that point Nigeria claimed that the Gas Supply Project Agreement –GSPA (which had been signed almost a decade earlier) was tainted by fraud and corruption. If the London Court decides that Nigeria should not be excused the years-long delay in filing a challenge, Nigeria can no longer seek to nullify the award in favor of P&ID. This is Nigeria’s last chance saloon.
P&ID has written to the court in United States alleging that Nigeria willfully misled the U.S. Court about its intentions for how to use the documents it was seeking and then obtained documents outside the limits of what the U.S. Court had authorised.
The P&ID legal team said it can find no legal precedent for a foreign government going direct to the U.S. court rather than via the DOJ for permission to collect evidence in the US in support of a criminal investigation.
Nigeria’s 1782 application illustrates a deliberate effort to subvert established diplomatic protocols in order to carry out their politically motivated campaign against P&ID without scrutiny by the DOJ – which might have questioned whether Nigeria’s campaign was appropriate under the U.S. Constitution.
Earlier on, U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer had ordered in New York that Nigeria can subpoena information from London-based hedge fund VR Capital, four subsidiaries and three of its directors.
