Nigeria has asked a London High Court to deliver judgement in its favour in a case against Process and Industrial Developments Company.
In the case marked CL-2019-000752, the Federal Government is seeking to overturn an arbitration award in favour of P&ID which has now accrued interest worth $11 billion.
The company claimed it entered into an agreement with Nigeria to build a gas processing plant in Calabar, Cross River State, but the deal collapsed because the Nigerian government did not fulfil its end of the bargain.
Nigeria’s lawyer, Mark Howard, told the court that P&ID obtained its contract “by telling repeated lies and paying bribes to officials.”
Howard said the company financially induced top Nigerian government officials including those who chaired the government technical committee that reviewed the gas plant contract and several others.
Furthermore, Howard said the founders of P&ID, Michael Quinn and Brendan Cahill, had a “track record of bribery” and were involved in corruption on an “industrial scale”.
“We see a picture of industrial-scale bribery and corruption. This was not some incidental, minor contract on the side. It was fundamental to P&ID’s way of doing business,” Howard said.
