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Nigeria prevailed in its monumental challenge to arbitral awards worth more than $11 billion that were obtained by a small offshore company following a failed gas project in Nigeria The UK Court ruled that Process & Industrial Developments Limited (P&ID) paid bribes when brokering the lucrative Nigerian gas processing contract, and then “practiced the most severe abuses of the arbitral process” to procure awards in their favour from a London tribunal.
Nigeria prevailed in its monumental challenge to arbitral awards worth more than $11 billion that were obtained by a small offshore company following a failed gas project in Nigeria The UK Court ruled that Process & Industrial Developments Limited (P&ID) paid bribes when brokering the lucrative Nigerian gas processing contract, and then “practiced the most severe abuses of the arbitral process” to procure awards in their favour from a London tribunal. The court has granted Nigeria £20 million in damages and compensation for a protracted legal dispute between Nigeria and Process & Industrial Developments Limited (P&ID).
A lengthy public trial earlier this year lifted the lid on an audacious conspiracy involving Nigerian officials, Irish businessmen, and London lawyers who stood to receive eye-watering sums under the arbitral awards, which have grown by $1.3 million every day in interest. The judgment pulls the plug on P&ID’s claim to enforce this $11 billion award against Nigeria, relieving the African nation of a bill equivalent to almost a third of its total annual budget for 2023 and over seven times its current health budget.
This development comes on the heels of Nigeria’s historic triumph in October 2023 when the court invalidated the fraudulent $11 billion arbitration award in favour of P&ID. Nigeria sought at least £20 million back from P&ID to cover its damages and legal fees. Essentially, what P&ID lawyers were trying to do was limit the amount it would pay to Nigeria as damages, and they fought hard to see if it would be in naira.
But the court ruled that they must pay £20 million to Nigeria, which must come in 28 days. Then came the request for appeal. Their request for an appeal on the currency at which they were going to pay Nigeria was also denied. So, in 28 days, P&ID must pay Nigeria at least 20 million pounds.
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Judge Robin Knowles of the Business and Property Court in London, which conducted its proceedings remotely and in private, determined that the awards had been obtained through fraudulent means and that the events in the case were against public policy. After Nigeria’s historic triumph in October, P&ID sought to revive their claims through new arbitration. However, the High Court in London decreed that the arbitration could only advance if the 2023 judgment remained enforceable.
