Nigeria gets more time to contest $9.6bn P&ID judgment debt

 

Nigeria has been granted more time by a London judge to challenge the arbitration award of $9.6 billion, more than a quarter of the country’s foreign reserves, to Process & Industrial Developments (P&ID) Limited.

Judge Ross Cranston said in a judgment Friday granting extra time that Nigeria had established a “strong prima facie case of fraud.”

The ruling, according to Bloomberg, allows Nigeria to continue to seek to overturn the penalty on the grounds that P&ID obtained a gas-supply contract a decade ago and the favourable arbitration decision through fraud. Last year, a British judge upheld the award won in 2017, a ruling Nigeria is also appealing.

Nigeria argued in July that it should be allowed to contest the arbitration panel’s conclusions outside the usual 28-day time limit because evidence of corruption perpetrated by P&ID had only recently been discovered.

The potentially costly crisis for Nigeria stems from a deal struck in 2010 where the government agreed to provide gas to a plant British Virgin Island-registered P&ID proposed to build.

The administration of President Muhammadu Buhari now argues the project was a sham designed by the company and corrupt public officials to engineer a successful arbitration claim against the country.

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Cranston said that, while it was not his responsibility at this stage to “decide whether a fraud took place,” Nigeria should be able to proceed to a full trial to test its accusations against P&ID.

“We are firmly committed to overturning the award, no matter how long it takes,” Attorney General Abubakar Malami said in an emailed statement to Bloomberg. “This is a major victory in our ongoing fight,” he said.

A spokesman for P&ID didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The company has previously denied all allegations of wrongdoing, claiming Nigeria has concocted the claims to avoid its legal obligation to compensate P&ID, Bloomberg reports.

P&ID is also attempting to enforce the arbitration award in the U.S., as it has done in the UK. The Nigerian government has asked the U.S. court to dismiss the company’s petition.