BVI-based company owed $11 billion by Nigeria rejects lying, bribery allegations

LONDON, Jan 24 (Reuters) – Lawyers representing a British Virgin Islands-based company owed $11 billion by Nigeria over a collapsed gas processing project on Tuesday rejected Nigerian allegations that it bribed senior officials to obtain a lucrative contract.

Nigeria is trying to overturn an award to Process & Industrial Developments (P&ID) of billions of dollars in damages that was made by a London arbitration tribunal in 2017.

The West African oil and gas producing nation was found in 2015 to be in breach of a 20-year gas processing contract awarded to P&ID.

Two years later, P&ID was awarded $6.6 billion for lost profits, a sum which has since swelled with interest to just over $11 billion, which represents around 30% of Nigeria’s foreign exchange reserves.

An eight-week trial began in London on Monday. The high-stakes case has attracted considerable interest among Nigerians.

On Monday, Mark Howard, representing Nigeria, told London’s High Court that P&ID obtained its contract “by telling repeated lies and paying bribes to officials”, and then “corrupted” Nigeria’s lawyers to obtain confidential documents during the arbitration.

P&ID denies paying any bribes or that it colluded with Nigeria’s legal team.

The company’s lawyer David Wolfson told the court on Tuesday: “None of Nigeria’s allegations … affords any justifiable ground for setting aside the award. There was no bribery, no perjury and no corruption.”

He argued in court documents that the challenge to the arbitration award was “just one part of (Nigeria’s) relentless, politically-motivated campaign to destroy P&ID and anyone and anything associated with it”.

Reporting by Sam Tobin; Editing by Alexander Smith and Catherine Evans

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