Nigeria would have lost $15 billion if it had lost the case against the international firm, Process & Industrial Development Limited, immediate past President Muhammadu Buhari has said.
Buhari, who made this known yesterday, while, reacting to the recent victory of Nigeria in the $ 11 billion Process & Industrial Developments (P&ID) arbitration award dispute describing it an attempt to steal “one-third of the nation’s foreign reserves.”
In the released article titled, ‘A Matter of Principle,’ Buhari expressed his relief at the judgment delivered by Justice Robin Knowles of the Commercial Courts of England and Wales, who upheld Nigeria’s appeal that the award was obtained through fraud.
The former president emphasized the gravity of the situation, stating, “This was an attempted heist of historic proportions, an attempt to steal from the treasury a third of Nigeria’s foreign reserves”.
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Recall that a Business and Property Court in London last week halted the enforcement of the $11 billion arbitration award in favour of P&ID against Nigeria in a case marked CL-2019-000752.
In a verdict issued by Justice Robert Knowles, it was determined that the method by which P&ID acquired a 2010 contract for the construction of a gas processing plant in Calabar, Cross River State, involved fraudulent actions and bribery.
Reacting, Buhari said: “Rarely in modern times can so few have tried to take so much from so many. If Nigeria had lost its arbitration dispute with Process & Industrial Development in a London court on 23 October, it would have cost our people close to USD 15 billion.
“We won, and all decent people can sleep easier as a result. Justice Robin Knowles said Nigeria had been the victim of a monstrous fraud. But it was a close-run thing.
“Had Nigeria lost, it would have required schools not to be built, nurses not to be trained and roads not to be repaired, on an epic scale, to pay a handful of contractors, lawyers and their allies – for a project that never broke ground.
“The ‘P&ID Affair’ was already firmly set by the time I came into office in 2015. A company registered in the British Virgin Islands that no one had heard of, with hardly any staff or assets, had won a contract to build a gas processing plant in Cross Rivers. The company was owned by Irish intermediaries who knew Nigeria well and had done business in everything from healthcare to fixing tanks.”
