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Akinwande Soji-Ojo
A commercial court in London, United Kingdom has dismissed an application by Process & Industrial Development (P&ID) seeking to appeal the judgement halting the enforcement of its $11 billion award against Nigeria.
In a judgement delivered on Thursday, Robin Knowles, the presiding judge, ruled that the award against Nigeria should be thrown out immediately.
Knowles had on October 23, 2023 halted the enforcement of the award by upholding Nigeria’s prayer that it was obtained by fraud and in violation of section 68 of the English Arbitration Act 1996.
The judge held that P&ID had paid bribes to Nigerian officials involved in the drafting of the gas supply and processing agreement (GSPA) in 2010.
He also held that P&ID was illegally in possession of Nigeria’s privileged legal documents during the arbitration hearings.
Knowles, however, said he still had to choose from three options after his determination.
The options include, ” (a) to remit the award to the tribunal, in whole or in part, for reconsideration, (b) to set the award aside in whole or in part, or (c) to declare the award to be of no effect, in whole or in part.”
Nigeria had argued that the award should be set aside in its entirety, invoking the common law principle that “fraud unravels all.”
But in his pronouncement on December 8, Knowles said he had decided against sending the award back to the arbitration tribunal and crushed the award in its entirety.
However, P&ID sought permission to appeal the October 2023 judgement.
Its lawyers argued that the judge failed to apply a “causation” requirement which would have shown if the arbitration award would still have been made if bribes had not been paid by P&ID to government officials.
They also argued that the privileged documents that were found in P&ID’s possession played no role in its victory at the arbitration.
But delivering judgement on Thursday, the judge refused P&ID’s permission to appeal, which effectively put an end to the case as the company cannot apply for permission from the Court of Appeal.
