FG asks UK court to overturn $11bn debt

Nigeria has asked a London High Court to deliver judgement in its favour in a case against Process and Industrial Developments Company.Information Guide Nigeria

PUNCH reports that the Federal Government asks the court to overturn $11bn P&ID debt.

In the case marked CL-2019-000752, the Nigerian Government is seeking to overturn an arbitration award in favour of P&ID which has now accrued interest worth $11 billion.

The company stated that it entered into an agreement with Nigeria to build a gas processing plant in Calabar, Cross River State.

However, the deal collapsed because the Nigerian government did not fulfil its end of the bargain.

Mark Howard, a lawyer representing Nigeria, told the court that P&ID obtained its contract “by telling repeated lies and paying bribes to officials.”

Howard said the founders of P&ID, Michael Quinn and Brendan Cahill, had a “track record of bribery” and were involved in corruption on an “industrial scale” PUNCH reports.NYSC Portal

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He further stated, “We see a picture of industrial-scale bribery and corruption. This was not some incidental, minor contract on the side. It was fundamental to P&ID’s way of doing business.”

Howard revealed that lawyers in the Nigerian team during the arbitration proceedings were also bribed.

The federal government accused the firm of suppressing vital evidence, bribery, and perjury among others to win the arbitration.

Trevor Burke and Seamus Andrew, the two lawyers who acted for P&ID in the arbitration proceedings, were also accused of breaching their obligations to the court by ignoring evidence of their client’s corruption in pursuit of a promised “pot of gold.”

Howard submitted, “As with the corrupted officials and legal advisors of FRN, so too was the integrity of Mr. Andrew and Mr. Burke compromised.”

“They were offered life-changing sums of money, contingent upon success in the claim, which induced them to look past evidence of blatant corruption (most obviously in the form of the FRN privileged documents) in the hope of reaching their promised pots of gold. They did so at the expense of their professional obligations.”

Following this, Howard said Nigeria is “respectfully asking the court to deliver a judgement as soon as reasonably possible”.JAMB Result

Meanwhile, P&ID maintained innocence and requested that the case be remitted to the original tribunal.

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