Nigeria is excited over the order by of London Commercial Court for the return of the $200m it deposited in the Process and Industrial Developments Limited case.
The country’s Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, said on Tuesday that the decision gladdened his heart, adding that it was one of the “multiple successes” his office had recorded so far.
He said the judgment demonstrated an “outcome of strong commitment and determination” of his office to tackle corruption and non-compliance with due process.
In a statement yesterday by his Special Assistant on Media and Public Relations, Dr. Umar Jibrilu Gwandu, the minister noted that since he took over the coordination of the case, it had been a matter of success upon success.
He said his office had obtained an order for stay of execution of the arbitral award granted to the firm, adding that the most populous black nation recorded tremendous success challenging the order for cash deposit of $200m to bank guarantee.
“Nigeria was successful as the court awarded payment of legal cost of €1.5m in favour of the country. The court also ordered the release of bank guarantee in favour of the Federal Government of Nigeria and awarded the payment of €70,000 to Nigeria as further legal cost relating to the issue,” he said.
According to him, the statistics helped immensely in establishing the fraud perpetuated by the firm against the country.
In 2012, P&ID, an engineering and project management company, told a United Kingdom arbitration judge that it invested $40m in the plant’s construction but never broke ground because the Nigerian government failed to build the promised infrastructure.
Last year, the British court authorised P&ID to seize more than $9.6bn of Nigeria’s foreign assets – more than the West African country’s annual health and education budgets combined.
The amount, one of the biggest UK arbitration awards ever, was based on the loss of two decades of presumed profits plus $1.2m per day in interest since the project went bust.
The award was stayed last November after Nigeria appealed, alleging that P&ID was unqualified for the work and won the contract through bribery.
But P&ID said that Nigeria invented the bribery allegation to distract from its own mismanagement.
