Nigeria’s Irish-linked $11bn trial ends with accusations of huge bribes and missing witnesses

Allegations of six-figure bribes, shady middlemen and fabricated evidence featured in the $11 billion (€10.3 billion) UK trial ending this week that could cost Nigeria a third of its foreign reserves.

Africa’s biggest economy wants the UK high court to strike down the huge arbitration award in favour of hedge fund-backed Process & Industrial Development Ltd (P & ) as soon as possible. Lawyers for both sides traded allegations of bribery, duplicity and incompetence in the eight-week trial – a judgment isn’t expected for at least several weeks.

An adverse ruling for Nigeria could hit the country’s already-stretched finances, make borrowing costlier and override policy priorities for the new president, who was elected last month.

The trial stems from a failed 2010 gas deal between Nigeria and P & , a British Virgin Islands-registered firm founded by two Irish businessmen: Michael Quinn, who died in 2015, and Brendan Carroll. A resulting arbitration led to a $6.6 billion award for P & that has now swelled to more than $11 billion with interest. Hedge fund VR Capital Group Ltd, two lawyers in the UK, P & ’s founder and two missing witnesses are among those who stand to gain billions of dollars if P & wins and is paid out in full.

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Nigeria alleged “bribery of epic and industrial scale” first for the gas deal and then to buy off lawyers representing the country to win the arbitration award in 2017. “Nobody who sat through the factual evidence could have missed the stench of corruption,” the country’s current lawyer, Mark Howard, said in his closing argument.

“We completely deny that there was any corruption,” David Wolfson, P & ’s lawyer, said on Wednesday in his closing argument. Nigeria came up with fabricated evidence to lay a “forensic trap” for the court to rule against the award, he said.

“Nigeria have been liberal in their mudslinging and parsimonious with the truth throughout this trial,” a spokesperson for the fund said.

In the witness box for a week, P & ’s surviving founder, Mr Cahill, described sending $250,000 in cash from Ireland to an official in Nigeria. P & said it was a business transaction unrelated to the case, arguing that Nigeria had failed to prove what Mr Howard called “unabashed evidence” of bribes. Mr Cahill didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.

Two key witnesses absent from the trial were Adam Quinn, the son of P & ’s late co-founder, Michael Quinn; and another businessman, who stand to make more than $2 billion and just short of $1 billion respectively if P & succeeds, according to Mr Howard.

Another witness who could have explained the “eye-watering sums of cash”, Mr Howard said, failed to appear at the last minute. The witness developed mental health problems days before he was to be deposed online from an “unspecified location”.

Witnesses that could help the company were harassed by Nigeria’s security services, P & said. The country didn’t call any witnesses of its own because it wasn’t required to under the court’s rules, a spokesperson said. The “extensive claims” against P & were “fully documented,” the spokesperson said.

But Mr Wolfson argued that any witnesses for the country would be exposed as frauds.

“This has been a peculiarly one-sided trial,” Mr Wolfson said. “Having elected to make its bed without evidence, the Federal Republic of Nigeria must now lie in it.” – Bloomberg