On Monday, the Federal Government of Nigeria was declared a final verdict of success in its legal dispute with Process & Industrial Developments (P&ID) Limited in a court of law in the United Kingdom (UK).
A verdict in favour of Nigeria was rendered after more than five years of legal wrangling; consequently, Nigeria has suspended the implementation of the $11 billion arbitration award that had been awarded to P&ID.
Robin Knowles, the Justice of the Commercial Courts of England and Wales, affirmed Nigeria’s petition in an email-delivered decision.
Knowles rendered a verdict in Nigeria’s favor, based on the argument that the gas processing contract in question was unlawfully acquired.
On January 31, 2017, a private arbitration tribunal issued an order requiring Nigeria to remit an enormous sum of $6.6 billion to P&ID, in addition to accrued interest from March 20, 2013.
Given the daily interest rate of $1 million and a fixed interest rate of seven percent, the cumulative potential payment had surpassed $11 billion prior to the verdict.
The High Court in London was the venue for an eight-week trial from January to March 2023, wherein Nigeria presented its substantive application to formally vacate the award.
Nigeria testified in court during the trial that P&ID was culpable for “industrial-scale” bribery and corruption, and that key P&ID associates obstructed evidence of corruption during the initial arbitral proceedings.
Additionally, it was asserted that attorneys affiliated with P&ID compromised their ethical standards by divulging classified national documents in an attempt to obtain a supposedly lucrative “pot of gold.”