Nigeria's Attorney-General's Reaction to the Judgement of the United Kingdom Commercial Court on the Matter Between Federal Republic of Nigeria and Process & Industrial Developments Limited (P&ID) - October 2023
Country
Year
2023
Summary
INTRODUCTION
1. As you may all be aware by now, the Honourable Mr Justice Robin St John Knowles of the United Kingdom Commercial Court today handed down a historic judgement in the suit where the Federal Republic of Nigeria (FRN) moved to set aside the arbitral award of US$9.6 (now circa USD11 Billion) made against it in 2017, in favour of Process and Industrial Developments Limited (P&ID) for an alleged breach of a Gas Supply and Processing Agreement (GSPA) it purportedly entered into with the Ministry of Petroleum Resources (MPR) to establish a gas processing plant in Calabar for which P&ID never ever secured any land site.
2. The Arbitral Award had over the years placed the assets of the FRN and those of its agencies all over the world at the risk of attachment, erosion of foreign reserves and distortion of monetary, fiscal and other policies of government with attendant dire consequences for Nigeria and its people. This emphasised the need for FRN to vigorously challenge and resist the enforcement of the Award by P&ID.
3. The High Court has today ruled that the Federal Republic of Nigeria's (FRN) challenge to the arbitration award granted against it to an obscure hedge-fund backed BVI shell entity Process & Industrial Developments Ltd (P&ID) in 2017 has been successful.
4. The judgment handed down today, found that the award had been obtained by fraud and in a way which was contrary to public policy. In particular, the Judge concluded that P&ID obtained the award only by "practising the most severe abuses of the arbitral process". He further noted "That this case has also, sadly, brought together a combination of examples of 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 to other." For us in this administration, it has been a night of long knives! This success marks the culmination of over a decade of legal action and is not just a victory for the people of Nigeria, but any similar target of corruption and fraud.
...