The West African giant was sentenced on 16 August by the Business and Property Courts of the United Kingdom to pay 9 billion dollars (8.1 billion euros), or 20% of its foreign exchange reserves , to Process and Industrial Developments Ltd (P & ID), a company based in the tax haven of the British Virgin Islands, for non-respect of contractual commitments.
The facts explained by the company on its website back in 2010 when the entity signs an agreement with Nigeria to build a gas processing plant in Calabar, a coastal town near the Cameroon border. The agreement provided for the African state to supply gas to P & ID, which never happened. Three years after the signing of the contract, the company files a complaint with an arbitral tribunal and obtains on the date of January 31, 2017, some 6.6 billion euros in damages and reparations with a default interest of 7%, ie estimate of what she would have earned during the 20 years of the agreement.
On February 15, the US District Court of Appeals in Columbia ruled Nigeria in favor of rejecting P & ID’s petition. The case is then brought before the British court called to rule as provided in the contract. This confirms the first judgment and increases the initial amount as interest. Finally, this company that intends to undertake seizures of Nigerian assets abroad is getting off cheaply by getting in 9 years what it would have earned in 20 years.
It should be noted that P & ID never started the work, even though it claims to have spent $ 40 million on the project. The company that claimed $ 1.9 billion initially revised its claims upward to $ 5.9 billion.
