A London court has refused to grant 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 judgment on Thursday, the presiding judge, Robin Knowles, ruled that the award against Nigeria should be thrown out immediately.
On October 23, Knowles 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 found that P&ID had paid bribes to Nigerian officials involved in drafting the gas supply and processing agreement (GSPA) in 2010.
He also found that P&ID illegally possessed Nigeria’s privileged legal documents during the arbitration hearings.
However, Knowles said he still had to choose from three options after making his determination.
The options included “(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. He crushed the award in its entirety.
However, P&ID sought permission to appeal the October 2023 judgment.
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 P&ID had not paid bribes to government officials.
They also argued that the privileged documents found in P&ID’s possession played no role in its victory at the arbitration.
But in the judgment on Thursday, the judge refused P&ID permission to appeal.
This effectively ends the case as the company cannot apply for permission from the court of appeal.
