Nigeria on Wednesday got a hard-won relief from a thorny lawsuit against it by Process and Industrial Developments (P&ID), a company registered in the British Virgin Islands.
The case had ground on for more than a decade and would have wiped out about one-third of Nigeria’s foreign reserves if victory had gone the way of the company.
P&ID, founded by Irish businessmen Michael Quinn and Brendan Cahill, had its bid to exact $11 billion in damages from the country over a controversial gas contract dismissed by London’s High Court Wednesday
The bid was dismissed because, among other grounds, awarding the contract had been tainted by bribery and fraud.
The court refused P&ID’s permission to appeal against the decison.
In August 2012, P&ID had taken Nigeria to arbitration in relation to a contract it signed two years before with the petroleum ministry to construct and operate a gas processing facility.
Its contention was that the country had not met its obligations…