The federal government says
Process and Industrial Developments (P&ID) got the 20-year gas supply
purchasing agreement (GSPA) contract illegally by bribing officials.
Mark Howard (pictured), Nigeria’s
lawyer, told Ross Cranston, a UK judge, that the Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission (EFCC) has discovered payments to people involved in the project and
their family members including Vera Taiga, whose mother, Grace Taiga, was a
director in the ministry of petroleum resources at the time the deal was
sealed.
Howard said one payment of
$4,969.50 was made on December 30, 2009, and another $5,000 was paid to her on
January 31, 2012, adding that P&ID claimed those payments were for health
expenses.
“If Grace Taiga was in financial
strain and she asked for the money from P&ID at this critical point and
P&ID paid her in secret at precisely the time the GSPA was being put
forward. That, in anybody’s language, is a bribe,” he explained during a
virtual court hearing.
“The nature of a bribe is not
affected by what the bribee intends to spend the money on, the point is it is
corrupt and improper to make payments to a government official when you are in
the process of negotiating a contract with the government.”
The lawyer said Taiga seemed to
have a pattern of receiving money from companies seeking government contract as
she also received money from two companies bidding for gas infrastructure
projects.
Grace Taiga is awaiting trial to
determine her role in the case.
In response to P&ID’s
argument that Nigeria missed the 28-day appeal deadline, Howard said Nigeria
only uncovered information about the deal in late 2019.
“Any legal team had to make a
judgement call about whether there was enough evidence to argue it was a case
of fraud,” he said.
‘$50,000 BRIBE TO TECHNICAL
COMMITTEE CHAIR’
Howard also told the court about
how Taofiq Tijani, who chaired the government technical committee that reviewed
the gas plant contract, had admitted to receiving $50,000 in cash from Neil Hitchcock,
a deceased P&ID project director.
“The first payment was cash, the
rest were through the banking system. The question is what was the essence of
these payments? Mr Tijani said he had significant pressure to put the project
through,” he told the judge.
“The payments we are referring to
is a cash payment to Mr Tijani. These were disguised payments to cover up their
tracks. October 19, £30,000, April 14, naira equivalent of €15,000 and same
date €26,400 pounds and €13,317. These are all payments in connection with the
project, which is described on page 34.
“My Lord, you look at these
payments and look at Mr Tijani concerning these payments and you see that these
payments cannot be accounted for. We are putting on one side the $50,000 that
Mr Tijani said he was paid in cash.”
Howard argued that the contract
was illegal for the onset as P&ID, a company who claimed to handle
large-scale oil and gas projects, spent millions of dollars in cash which is
illegal under Nigeria’s money-laundering laws.
He said the company knew that it
could not perform the project and thus, never, paid for the land where the
project would have been sited.
“P&ID knew it could not
perform such a huge contract, got the contract awarded through bribes and it
knew it would extract money from Nigeria through arbitration or a settlement,”
he said.
The hearing continues on Tuesday
and the outcome will determine if Nigeria can continue its appeal to overturn
the judgement against it.
P&ID reportedly entered a gas
supply and processing agreement with Nigeria in 2010. Claiming Nigeria breached
the terms of the contract, it took a legal recourse and secured an arbitral
award against the country, which has accumulated to $9.6 billion.
Nigeria has been making moves to
overturn the judgement and has gotten court clearance to request documents from
a P&ID stakeholder and review bank statements of ex-President Goodluck
Jonathan, Diezani Alison-Madueke and Rilwanu Lukman, former ministers of
petroleum.
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