{"id":20394,"date":"2019-09-05T00:25:48","date_gmt":"2019-09-05T00:25:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=20394"},"modified":"2019-09-05T00:25:48","modified_gmt":"2019-09-05T00:25:48","slug":"is-one-of-the-worlds-biggest-lawsuits-built-on-a-sham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=20394","title":{"rendered":"Is One of the World\u2019s Biggest Lawsuits Built on a Sham?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Quinn. Photo Source: The Phoenix
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A dying Irishman went for one last big score in Nigeria. The project failed, but a London tribunal says his company\u2019s owed $9 billion and counting.

By\u00a0Kit Chellel,\u00a0Joe Light, and\u00a0Ruth Olurounbi<\/strong> (Bloomberg – www.bloomberg.com<\/strong>)<\/p>\n\n\n

Gaslighting<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

The oilfield fires of the Niger Delta burn day and night. Metal pipes snake through the swampland, spewing flames so vast they cast the sky in apocalyptic orange. Southern Nigeria sits atop a bubbling stew of oil and gas. Companies want only the former, so they incinerate the latter. The industry calls it \u201cflaring.\u201d

For millions of Nigerians, flaring is a curse. It fills the air with toxic fumes that cause respiratory disease and cancer and later fall as acid rain, which damages homes and crops. It also wastes vast amounts of energy in a region where many villages lack electricity and cities suffer daily blackouts.

In 2008 the Nigerian government said it would end flaring by using oilfield gas to generate electricity. The minister of petroleum resources acknowledged that the challenge would be \u201cenormous.\u201d Converting gas requires it to be captured, transported, refined, and piped back to power plants and onto the grid.

Officials struggled to persuade big multinationals to invest in the required infrastructure, so concessions were granted to 13 smaller companies, some virtually unknown. One was Process and Industrial Developments Ltd., or P&ID, which was registered in the British Virgin Islands but had no website or track record. Its chairman was Michael \u201cMick\u201d Quinn, a 68-year-old Irishman with a rakish mustache and decades of experience in Nigeria, mostly as a military contractor.

Quinn knew powerful people, including the petroleum minister, who guaranteed P&ID a 20-year supply of \u201cwet,\u201d or unrefined, gas for a plant the company would build. The raw material would be supplied for free, to be treated and returned at no cost. P&ID would instead profit from the byproducts, butane and propane. Everyone stood to benefit, not least the villagers whose homes would be lit by electricity rather than the wan glow of flaming methane.

Then the plan fell apart. The government failed to secure any waste gas from oil companies, let alone link up the necessary pipeline, and the plant was never built. In 2012, P&ID notified the oil ministry that it was suing for breach of contract in a London arbitration forum. After a set of closed legal proceedings, judges awarded P&ID $6.6 billion, one of the biggest amounts a company has won from a sovereign state. When Nigeria dragged its feet on payment, P&ID teamed up with a hedge fund and moved the case to public courts, where it could ask judges to seize state assets, including bank accounts and cargo ships.

In the summer of 2018, a man who\u2019d worked for Quinn contacted Joseph Pizzurro, a veteran New York lawyer hired by Nigeria to lead its defense in the U.S. The caller wanted to talk about the P&ID case. \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s genuine,\u201d the man said, according to an account he gave\u00a0Bloomberg Businessweek\u00a0on condition of anonymity because he feared for his safety. He told Pizzurro that Quinn had conspired with officials to profit from government projects that were doomed from the start and that P&ID was one of at least three such lawsuits involving Quinn. The caller couldn\u2019t provide enough evidence to substantiate his claims, though, and he didn\u2019t contact Pizzurro again.

This August, P&ID won a ruling from a London judge allowing the firm to start seizing Nigerian assets. Hailed as a vindication by Quinn\u2019s company, it caused an outcry in Nigeria. The country\u2019s finance minister said at a press conference that the size of the award, which has risen above $9 billion with interest, meant all Nigerians would pay a price. The chair of the central bank said that the case has affected monetary policy. Toward the end of the month, the justice ministry opened a corruption investigation into how the gas plant deal was struck. \u201cThe contract was designed to fail right from inception,\u201d attorney general Abubakar Malami told reporters. If the Nigerian government is right, P&ID was an audacious scheme that had made unwitting accomplices of legal professionals, financial institutions, and politicians around the world.

The company and its founders remain elusive. A Nigerian newspaper recently published a list of unanswered questions about the firm: Where are its offices? How many people does it employ? How did such a tiny company win such a large concession? Quinn isn\u2019t around to answer them; he died of cancer in 2015. But a close examination of his career, drawn from public records, leaked documents, and interviews with friends and former associates, shows that P&ID wasn\u2019t the only Quinn project to end in disappointment, lawsuits, and corruption allegations. It was just the largest\u2014the one that was supposed to provide his biggest payday.<\/p>\n\n\n

Man in Mohair<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

Quinn grew up in Drimnagh, a tough neighborhood in Dublin. After leaving school as a teenager in the 1950s, he trained as a mechanic. An ordinary blue-collar life might have beckoned had one of his neighbors not started a show band, the Royal Olympics. These groups were unique to \u201960s and \u201970s Ireland: shiny-suited young men playing rock \u2019n\u2019 roll or jazz, perpetually touring church halls and farm sheds to earn shoeboxes full of cash.

The Olympics needed a manager, and soon Quinn had a new career as one of the natty, ruthless handlers a BBC documentary labeled \u201cmen in mohair suits.\u201d He ran some top acts: Daddy Cool & the Lollipops, Twink, Dickie Rock. An old friend recalls that he\u2019d approach a singer and say, \u201cHow much are you earning? One hundred pounds a gig? I can get you 1,000.\u201d

Quinn stuck with the industry for a while after the show bands\u2019 popularity declined\u2014newspaper reports suggest he arranged an Irish tour by Diana Ross and the Supremes\u2014but there was more money to be made elsewhere. At some point in the \u201970s he started working in Nigeria, either as an oil trader or a financier of cement deals, depending on which of the scattered accounts of his life you believe. He began profiting from a construction boom taking place in Lagos, which was then expanding with such chaotic abandon that hundreds of cement-bearing cargo ships were lined up at port waiting to dock.

He kept working in Ireland, too. In 1979 he and a partner, Brendan Cahill, formed an umbrella company with the resolutely dull name Industrial Consultants (International) to oversee their interests. They began working with the government, for example getting a public grant worth $450,000 to start a videocassette factory near Dublin. The project went bust within two years.

Quinn\u2019s business drew on some powerful allies dating to his show band days. One of the closest was Albert Reynolds, a former music hall impresario who was elected to Parliament in 1977 and became prime minister in 1992. Two years after being elected PM, Reynolds was promoting Kent Steel, one of Quinn\u2019s companies, as a potential savior of Irish industry. Kent had recently won 3 million Irish pounds (about $4.3 million at the time) from the European Union to explore cleaner technology for making steel\u2014potentially a huge boon. Instead, the project produced nothing but some sketches and a bunch of debris.

Joe McCartin, then a member of the European Parliament, says he raised concerns with an EU official that the deal was a scam and was told, \u201cDon\u2019t worry. Your prime minister, Albert Reynolds, knows all about the project.\u201d The EU did eventually start a probe into the grant, and McCartin, who\u2019s now retired, says its investigators showed him a letter from Irish prosecutors relaying that a fraud had been committed but that they couldn\u2019t identify the perpetrators. The probe was eventually closed without penalty; the EU refused to fulfill a freedom of information request about the case, citing privacy rules. Reynolds passed away in 2014.

Quinn\u2019s name came up again during a nationwide corruption inquiry in Ireland.\u00a0The Mahon Tribunal, as it was eventually known, lasted for 14 years, compiling evidence of graft on an epic scale. Quinn was called as a witness in June 2007, one of the few times he ever spoke on the record. The tribunal wanted to know more about relationships Industrial Consultants had with Frank Dunlop, a shady lobbyist, and Liam Lawlor, a corrupt Republican MP who\u2019d resigned in disgrace before being killed in a 2005 car crash outside Moscow.

Quinn denied knowledge of invoices that bore his company\u2019s name\u2014payments for golf fundraisers, he guessed\u2014and said he thought his signature had been forged on checks. He had no recollection of many of his dealings with Dunlop. \u201cYou are a singularly unhelpful witness,\u201d Alan Mahon, the presiding judge, told him. \u201cWhat you are telling us is nothing, absolutely nothing.\u201d The tribunal later found that tens of thousands of pounds had flowed from Quinn\u2019s companies to Lawlor, but Quinn wasn\u2019t recalled to the stand, and neither he nor Industrial Consultants faced any action.

By then, Quinn had developed a fearsome reputation. Several former associates told\u00a0Businessweek\u00a0they were scared to speak on the record about him, because they believed he had ties to Irish paramilitaries; one said Quinn told him his father had been in the original Irish Republican Army in the 1920s. Employees introduced him as \u201cthe chairman,\u201d and he employed a man with a pugilist\u2019s squashed nose to drive guests around Dublin, apparently without great regard for red lights. A former Quinn associate says that when Quinn\u2019s daughter ended a brief marriage to David Boreanaz, an American actor best known for roles on\u00a0Buffy the Vampire Slayer\u00a0and\u00a0Angel, Boreanaz called Quinn to make sure there was no bad blood between them. Boreanaz\u2019s manager didn\u2019t respond to requests for comment.

The Trouble With Nigeria<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

Throughout the 2000s, Quinn lived a kind of double life, divided between Nigeria and a comfortable suburban house near Dublin. At home he was Mick from Drimnagh, living with his wife, Anita, who\u2019d been his childhood sweetheart, and their two Doberman pinschers. On Tuesday nights he\u2019d drop Anita off at bingo, then pick up fish and chips for dinner.

Life in Nigeria was very different. The country\u2019s freewheeling capitalism was fraught with risk and opportunity. The writer Chinua Achebe detailed the climate in his 1983 polemic\u00a0The Trouble With Nigeria: Contracts with the military government were currency, doled out by senior politicians to allies and friends as the public bore the burden of hidden kickbacks, inflated prices, and stolen materials. Military rule ended in 1999, but democratic Nigeria was proving just as restive and complex. There were tribal uprisings in the Niger Delta and kidnappings and religious conflict elsewhere.

Quinn nevertheless thrived, befriending presidents and civil servants alike. He and Cahill used a company called Marshpearl to bid for lucrative military contracts, initially registering the name in Ireland, then in 1999 using the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca & Co. to create Marshpearl Ltd. in the British Virgin Islands. To the outside world, the BVI company was practically untraceable. Mossack Fonseca documents leaked to the newspaper\u00a0S\u00fcddeutsche Zeitung\u00a0and made available to\u00a0Businessweek\u00a0by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists show that Marshpearl Ltd.\u2019s directors were nominees, paper executives whose sole job was to sign documents. (Reached by phone, one of them, Nigel John Carter, a Geneva-based trusts specialist who was also a director of another Quinn BVI vehicle called Kristholm Ltd., said, \u201cI\u2019ve never heard of those two companies.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n

Marshpearl sponsored a local polo team, giving Quinn an excuse to mix with the Nigerian ruling classes. His sons attended elite private schools with the sons of politicians and generals, who asked Quinn to help them acquire helicopters, Japanese motorcycles, and more. On the golf course back in Ireland, friends recall, Quinn would pick up the phone to talk to various officials or military leaders. \u201cDid you get them guns?\u201d one friend remembers him asking in his distinctive Drimnagh drawl. His golf buddies were never sure if he was joking. His contacts included Theophilus Danjuma, who\u2019d risen to prominence in the \u201960s by leading a bloody coup against Nigeria\u2019s military ruler. Danjuma went on to become a general, then entered business and eventually politics, ascending to defense minister in 1999. He later sold a stake in a Nigerian oil field to a Chinese state company, helping make him a billionaire.

One of the few people who would speak on the record about Quinn\u2019s life in Nigeria is Neil Murray, a friend of 30 years who was involved in several Quinn projects there. Sitting one night at the Abuja Hilton piano bar, a favorite haunt, Murray wasn\u2019t hard to spot: a gray-haired figure so hunched over he was bent almost double, puffing cigarettes and chatting with businessmen and prostitutes, who called him Papa. After initially accusing a\u00a0Businessweek\u00a0reporter of being a spy for the Nigerian government, he agreed to talk. \u201cMick knew Obasanjo. He knew Yar\u2019Adua,\u201d Murray said, referring to former presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Umaru Musa Yar\u2019Adua. \u201cHe knew everyone.\u201d

Among the projects Murray was involved in was a contract to repair and upgrade 36 British-made Scorpion tanks at an abandoned plant at Bauchi, in the dusty heart of Nigeria. It had all the hallmarks of Quinn\u2019s deals in the country: complexity, misdirection, and a substantial payday for the middleman. \u201cThere was a subsequent contract, and a subsequent contract, and a subsequent contract,\u201d Murray said. \u201cIt was an ongoing process.\u201d Quinn personally recruited military experts to manage the work and find replacement parts. At one point, Danjuma visited the site.

Several people involved in the venture described each vehicle as an opportunity for profit. Petrol engines were replaced with diesel engines. New radios were installed. When faulty valves needed replacing, one former employee said, he found a British supplier for a few pounds a unit. \u201cToo cheap,\u201d he remembered Quinn telling him. They found costlier valves elsewhere. The more expensive the new part, the bigger Marshpearl\u2019s cut.

A memo viewed by\u00a0Businessweek\u00a0that circulated among Quinn\u2019s team noted that Marshpearl had charged the Nigerian army for undelivered tank parts, making his organization \u201cvulnerable.\u201d But the company kept winning contracts, in spite of this hitch and others. It\u2019s not clear how many millions of dollars Nigeria spent on the Bauchi project, but the relationship likely made Quinn a fortune.

For one contract, a spinoff from the main deal, his company sought to supply about 4,000 rounds of tank ammunition made by Belgian defense company Mecar SA. A January 2005 memo outlining Marshpearl\u2019s plan says Quinn\u2019s staff told Mecar they would handle bidding, contracts, and billing. Mecar\u2019s managers \u201cdo not want to know the details as they would be embarrassed with Belgian authorities and U.S. owners,\u201d the memo said.

The blueprint called for Marshpearl to establish a company called Mecar SA, register it in Cyprus, and open a bank account for the new offshore entity to avoid Nigerian taxes on the income. The original Mecar would write up a bid for the contract and send it to Marshpearl, where the document would be scanned and altered to increase its value by 20%\u2014commission for Quinn and his friends. Payment to the original Mecar would be routed through the offshore one. All documentation was to be delivered by hand.

The \u201cpaper trail\u201d was Marshpearl\u2019s greatest area of concern, the memo\u2019s author wrote, without explaining why. Broadly speaking, while offshore companies have legitimate purposes, they\u2019re also favored by those trying to avoid tax or government scrutiny or hide illicit income. In some jurisdictions, secrecy laws make it virtually impossible to find out who owns them. Registering a company with a virtually identical name to a separate, legitimate business would have the effect of further obscuring the real beneficiaries.

To a watchdog or another outside observer, the Mecar arrangement would look like a simple transaction between a respected manufacturer and the army, with the middleman getting its cut. A tender bid document sent by the offshore Mecar to the Ministry of Defense a few months after the memo\u2019s date placed the contract\u2019s ultimate value at \u20ac4.9 million ($5.6 million), meaning Marshpearl would have made almost a million euros.

Shown the memo at the Hilton bar, Murray said, \u201cVery clever.\u201d He didn\u2019t see anything improper in the deal\u2019s structure but added, \u201cI wasn\u2019t directly involved.\u201d A spokesman for Mecar\u2019s current owner, Nexter Group, said the Marshpearl deal took place before it acquired the company in 2014 and that it complies with rules and regulations.

The Art of the Failed Deal

It\u2019s said that in Nigeria you can go from pauper to millionaire overnight and back again just as quickly. Even old hands could be caught out by a sudden shift in the political climate, as Quinn was in October 2006. That month, he was charged with espionage and handling secret military materials, alongside his son Adam, a close associate from Ireland named James Nolan, three Nigerian officials, and three individuals from Israel, Romania, and Russia. Details are sketchy, but one of the Nigerian officials submitted an affidavit saying the indictment was over a \u201clarge scale of contract scam which involves very senior officers of the Ministry.\u201d Nolan and Adam Quinn didn\u2019t respond to requests from\u00a0Businessweek\u00a0for comment, but they denied the charges at the time. The prosecution appears to have been dropped within a year. A defense lawyer involved with the case recalls that the government intervened.\u201d

That same year, Quinn formed P&ID and began exploring opportunities in gas power. He also branched out into medical technology. In 2006, more people were living with HIV\/AIDS in Nigeria than in any country but South Africa or India. The Nigerian health ministry\u2019s efforts to tackle the crisis included a multimillion-dollar partnership with Dublin-based Trinity Biotech Plc to supply HIV testing kits and help set up a factory at the Sheda Science & Technology Complex, which was being constructed outside Abuja. The contract for the factory went to an entity called Trinitron, which local media assumed was a subsidiary of the similarly named Irish company. In fact, it had no formal connection to Trinity Biotech of Dublin and was jointly owned by the health ministry and a group of Irish and Nigerian businessmen. Trinitron\u2019s Irish directors included Adam Quinn and James Nolan, according to three people familiar with the deal. Quinn\u2019s firm Industrial Consultants became a shareholder.

A few years into the contract, Trinity discovered that Trinitron had registered a company called Trinity Biotech Nigeria domestically and another called Trinity Biotech Joint Venture in the British Virgin Islands. Executives from the original Trinity were furious when they learned of the clones. In 2008 and 2009, they pulled out of the project entirely.

\u201cTrinity Biotech had no ownership stake in Trinitron or the Sheda project or in any entity or assets within Nigeria,\u201d the Dublin company said in a statement to\u00a0Businessweek. \u201cOur role in the project was the provision of HIV test kits, which we did, although we were left with a significant unpaid debt when the project ended.\u201d Eventually, government funding dried up, and, according to two sources, Trinitron was reporte\nd to local police for allegedly misspending state funds,\n though no one was charged.

Gerry Nash, Trinitron\u2019s former project director, said in a statement that test kit production at the factory in Nigeria hadn\u2019t progressed because the health ministry wouldn\u2019t buy the kits locally. \u201cPeople in the Nigerian Ministries were more interested in picking up commissions on imported products,\u201d he wrote. He said that Trinitron had succeeded in developing an IT system and in training HIV specialists, and he denied that the venture was a failure overall, even though the Sheda factory wound down after a few years.

Today, the Sheda site outside Abuja is overgrown with weeds. A pockmarked sign outside the front gate attests that Trinitron once operated there, but none of the buildings look functional. Gravel piles dot the parking lots. The handful of bored security guards and administrative staff on-site say only that Trinitron is no longer there.

When it wasn\u2019t possible to squeeze profit directly from a floundering project, Quinn could enlist the law for the purpose. In 2010, Industrial Consultants brokered a $5 million deal with the Nigerian Air Force to repair ejector seats in six Alpha Jets, small fighter craft often used to train pilots. A British company called North Wales Military Aviation Services Ltd. would do the fixing.

A few months into the contract, the air force terminated it for no apparent reason. The ensuing dispute ended up before a Nigerian arbitration panel, which found that the military had pulled out for \u201cflimsy, untenable, and unacceptable reasons.\u201d It awarded NWMAS about $2.3 million for work allegedly done, plus interest, according to a copy of the private judgment seen by\u00a0Businessweek.

The case was straightforward enough, apart from one detail: NWMAS didn\u2019t know about any of it. In a statement, the company said its executives had hosted Nigerian officials but never got word it had won the job. Instead, a few months after the visit, it received a letter saying the air force was suing for nonperformance. NWMAS managers forwarded the letter to Quinn\u2019s team and heard nothing further on the matter until being contacted by\u00a0Businessweek\u00a0earlier this year.

If NWMAS didn\u2019t participate in the lawsuit, who did? Individuals from the Quinn organization. Long before the ejector seat contract was finalized, unbeknownst to the original company, Quinn\u2019s team had registered a local entity called NWMAS Nigeria Ltd.\u2014another clone.

Murray testified at the arbitration on behalf of NWMAS. \u201cThey never f—king paid,\u201d he told\u00a0Businessweek, referring to the Nigerian air force. He said the British NWMAS had been fully aware of the case and that NWMAS Nigeria had been created to comply with local regulations.

Quinn\u2019s organization apparently had trouble collecting the award. In 2013, Cahill sent a message to colleagues about the struggle to enforce the judgment in Nigeria\u2019s chaotic courts. \u201cThe moral of the story is that ideally the \u2018seat\u2019 of arbitration should be outside of Nigeria and preferably in London,\u201d he wrote.

Quinn and Cahill already had a stake in at least two lawsuits against Nigeria before the British courts. One of the cases relates to IPCO (Nigeria) Ltd., formerly part of Singapore-based construction group IPCO International Ltd. The parent company sold most of its stake in 2003, leaving behind a shell company whose sole activity seems to have been to engage in lawsuits\u2014notably a $150 million case against the Nigerian petroleum ministry over delays to the construction of an oil terminal. There were familiar allegations of overcharging, and the suit went all the way to the U.K. Supreme Court before being settled on confidential terms last year. How much IPCO Nigeria\u2019s owners received and who benefited remains a mystery. You won\u2019t find Quinn\u2019s or Cahill\u2019s name in the countless claims, counterclaims, and rulings produced since the case began more than a decade ago, but according to three people familiar with Cahill\u2019s role, he helped manage the U.K. lawsuit for IPCO Nigeria in return for a share of the proceeds. The company\u2019s director, Olu Adewunmi, declined to comment on whether Cahill was involved in the lawsuit.
<\/p>\n\n\n

The Big One<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

The other case, of course, was P&ID. Nigeria\u2019s desire to end flaring and provide power to the troubled Niger Delta had offered Quinn, almost 70 and in poor health, an opportunity to secure his legacy. \u201cMick was sick,\u201d Murray said. \u201cHe wanted to go out on a big one.\u201d

In 2012, once it had grown obvious the gas project wouldn\u2019t come off, P&ID invoked its right to take Nigeria to arbitration in London. Three judges, two Brits and a Nigerian, oversaw the proceedings. From the start, Nigeria\u2019s government seemed reluctant to participate. Its lawyers in Lagos didn\u2019t provide a list of preliminary arguments until January 2014. Later that year, a few weeks before the first scheduled hearing, they told the tribunal they might not be able to set out the government\u2019s case in writing or attend, \u201cdue to the inability of our client to provide us with complete instructions.\u201d

P&ID\u2019s submissions included a lengthy witness statement from Quinn, one of his last public declarations before he died. He described spending two years and an estimated $40 million on preparatory work for the gas plant, including a 3D digital model. \u201cI cannot say with any certainty why the government failed to honour the GSPA,\u201d Quinn wrote of the gas sale and purchase agreement. He suspected pressure from international oil companies was to blame. \u201cIn any event, I very much regret that we were prevented from implementing the GSPA, which I firmly believe would have been of significant benefit to the nation.\u201d In outlining his history in Nigeria, he didn\u2019t mention any of his military deals, the espionage charge, or the two other lawsuits against the country.

On the basis of largely unchallenged evidence provided by P&ID, the judges dismissed Nigeria\u2019s objections and proceeded to the next stage: damages. According to the Abuja-based\u00a0Premium Times,\u00a0Quinn\u2019s company agreed to settle for $850 million, but the government of President Muhammadu Buhari, who\u2019d taken office in May 2015, rejected the deal. When the tribunal convened a hearing on the matter, Nigeria called only one witness\u2014a lawyer who, in the words of the judges, didn\u2019t \u201cclaim firsthand knowledge of any of the relevant events.\u201d In January 2017 they awarded P&ID the profits they calculated it had missed out on because the plant wasn\u2019t built: $6.6 billion, more than three times its original estimate of losses.

A ruling in London didn\u2019t guarantee payment, though. P&ID\u2019s lawyers took the judgment to several hedge funds that specialize in wringing cash from bad debts, according to someone familiar with the conversations. Records show they found at least one taker:\u00a0VR Capital Group Ltd., a fund manager with offices in London, New York, and Moscow.

VR acquired one quarter of P&ID\u2014which really meant, because the only thing of value P&ID possesses is a favorable legal ruling, that it was buying a share of the suit\u2019s proceeds, presumably in return for helping finance the legal action. (Reached by phone, VR Capital President Richard Deitz said, \u201cNo. Can\u2019t talk. I\u2019m busy,\u201d then hung up. The company didn\u2019t respond to an emailed request for comment.) The remainder of P&ID is held by Cayman Islands-based Lismore Capital Ltd., whose ultimate owners are unknown. If the Nigerian government ever pays up, it will be impossible to know who benefits.

Last October law firm Kobre & Kim and public-relations specialist DCI Group registered with the U.S. Senate to lobby on behalf of P&ID. Op-eds critical of Nigeria soon appeared in\u00a0Forbes\u00a0and the\u00a0Daily Telegraph, urging its government to honor the judgment; another, authored in London\u2019s\u00a0City A.M.\u00a0newspaper by\u00a0Priti Patel, a former British secretary of state for international development, accused the country of flouting international law. Journalists also began receiving messages from a group called P&ID Facts, whose emails list the same address as that of DCI Group. \u201cThe founders of P&ID have a track record of delivering in Nigeria and for Nigerians,\u201d the organization\u2019s website says. \u201cThe P&ID project was to be their swan song project after over three decades of public works projects in the country.\u201d

Nigeria\u2019s president thus far appears unmoved. A former general who styles himself as a simple cattle farmer and anticorruption crusader, Buhari has a relatively clean reputation. He responded angrily to Patel, issuing a statement through his spokesman that echoed what Pizzurro\u2019s whistleblower had said: The P&ID lawsuit wasn\u2019t what it appeared to be. \u201cBefore the coming of the Buhari administration, there existed in the country a racket encompassing elements in the three arms of government, the executive, legislature, and the judiciary through the activities of which artificial, engineered, and factored breaches of contract are made, judgments are obtained, appeals are delayed, and the penalty imposed is paid and shared,\u201d the statement read. \u201cNigerians need to pity their own country for the way things were done in the past.\u201d

A spokeswoman for P&ID said the panel of arbitrators had heard evidence from both sides and ruled unanimously that Nigeria failed to uphold its contractual commitments and was liable to P&ID. \u201cIt is unfortunate that instead of accepting the tribunal judgment and engaging in good-faith discussions to bring about a solution, President Buhari\u2019s government has resorted to spreading unfounded allegations,\u201d she said. She described the justice department\u2019s corruption probe as a \u201csham\u201d and said the government\u2019s allegations were \u201centirely fictional,\u201d adding, \u201cThe Nigerian people would be better served if the government made a serious offer to resolve this dispute rather than only blaming others, which will not make the legal obligation to pay go away.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

The list of Nigerians skeptical of P&ID\u2019s position includes Danjuma, the 81-year-old billionaire and former general. In an interview with\u00a0Businessweek, he said the gas flaring project was originally his idea, and that one of his companies, Tita-Kuru Petrochemicals Ltd., had spent the $40 million preparing it, not Quinn. The Irishman had been a consultant, using Danjuma\u2019s funds and office space, the general said. When Quinn applied for the contract himself, Danjuma was upset.

The realization dawned, he said, that \u201cmy consultant was going to steal my project.\u201d He recalled being promised a share of P&ID in return for his initial investment, but added that he hadn\u2019t heard from the company in years and that Cahill hadn\u2019t replied to letters about the lawsuit. At one point, Danjuma dusted off his hands to emphasize the relationship\u2019s end. P&ID\u2019s spokesperson declined to comment on Danjuma\u2019s involvement or any other matters raised in this story. Cahill didn\u2019t respond to attempts to contact him directly.

Lights Out<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

At Quinn\u2019s funeral in February 2015, they played\u00a0The Lonesome Boatman, a flute ballad by the Fureys, one of the bands he\u2019d managed in his youth. His\u00a0obituary\u00a0in the\u00a0Irish Independent\u00a0traced his love of Nigeria to those days, saying he\u2019d found doing business there much like running show bands in the \u201960s. \u201cHe was a clever guy, an honorable guy,\u201d Murray said of his longtime friend. \u201cHe was trusted. How much money he made I don\u2019t know. His house is a hell of a lot bigger than mine.\u201d

In spite of Buhari\u2019s comments and the criminal probe, Nigeria hasn\u2019t made any formal allegations of misconduct, and it isn\u2019t clear whether the country will challenge the deal\u2019s legitimacy in court. Meanwhile, the $9 billion debt is growing by more than $1 million a day, because of interest. P&ID is now owed enough to fund Nigeria\u2019s school system for seven years.

Or perhaps enough to eliminate flaring for good. In May an Abuja TV news program aired a segment about villagers who were using flames from the Niger Delta\u2019s gas pipes to dry their fish, seemingly unaware of the health risks. \u201cCommunities don\u2019t know the difference between day and night because they go to bed with active gas flare sites,\u201d said Faith Nwadishi, a local activist. The show\u2019s host was just beginning a sermon about electricity\u2019s importance for economic development when a power outage struck, plunging central Abuja into darkness.<\/p>\n\n\n

\u2014With Tope Alake, Matthew Campbell, Gavin Finch, Daryna Krasnolutska, the\u00a0International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, and\u00a0S\u00fcddeutsche Zeitung.<\/strong>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A dying Irishman went for one last big score in Nigeria. The project failed, but a London tribunal says his company\u2019s owed $9 billion and counting. By\u00a0Kit Chellel,\u00a0Joe Light, and\u00a0Ruth Olurounbi (Bloomberg – www.bloomberg.com) Gaslighting The oilfield fires of the Niger Delta burn day and night. Metal pipes snake through the swampland, spewing flames so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20394\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}