A British judge has ordered the Nigerian government to pay $9bn in assets to a small private company.<\/p>\n
The firm, P&ID, had reached a deal with the Nigerian government in 2010 to build a natural gas plant – but the deal fell through two years later.<\/p>\n
P&ID then sued the government for failing to provide the gas or install the pipelines it had promised to build.<\/p>\n
The firm was first awarded $6.6bn (\u00a35.4bn) in 2017, but the London court has now added $2.4bn in interest.<\/p>\n
According to the firm’s website, the deal would have allowed it to “build a state-of-the-art gas processing plant to refine natural gas…[that] Nigeria would receive free of charge to power its national electric grid”.<\/p>\n
The firm said it had accrued interest of $1.2m a day as a result of the collapsed deal, but the government’s legal team said this was “manifestly excessive and penal”, AFP reported.<\/p>\n
The final amount of more than $9bn is equivalent to about 20% of Nigeria’s declared foreign reserves of $45bn.<\/p>\n
The government also told the Commercial Court in London that English courts did not have the authority to rule on the dispute.<\/p>\n
Nigeria argued that as the original deal was made under Nigerian law, “the seat of the arbitration was Nigeria”.<\/p>\n
But Justice Christopher Butcher disagreed, and ruled in P&ID’s favour.<\/p>\n
“I am prepared to make an order enforcing the final award,” he said in his ruling statement. “I will receive submissions from the parties as to the precise form of order appropriate.”<\/p>\n
The judge’s decision converts the 2017 arbitration award into a legal judgement, which allows P&ID to try to seize assets from Nigeria.<\/p>\n
Andrew Stafford QC, the barrister representing P&ID, told Reuters the firm would “begin the process of seizing Nigerian assets in order to satisfy this award as soon as possible”.<\/p>\n
Nigeria’s solicitor general Dayo Apata said the government would appeal against the decision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A British judge has ordered the Nigerian government to pay $9bn in assets to a small private company. The firm, P&ID, had reached a deal with the Nigerian government in 2010 to build a natural gas plant – but the deal fell through two years later. P&ID then sued the government for failing to provide […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":2577,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,15],"tags":[377,456,204,202],"class_list":["post-14258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-economy","tag-company","tag-gas","tag-government","tag-oil"],"yoast_head":"\n