By Adedapo Adesanya
The presidency on Thursday accused a Chinese company, Zhongshan Fucheng Industrial Investment Company Limited, of subterfuge after a French court ruled in favour of the firm and granted the seizure of presidential jets belonging to the Nigerian government.
The Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Mr Bayo Onanuga, in a statement today alleged that the Chinese firm was trying “to take over offshore assets of the Federal Government of Nigeria through subterfuge”.
Business Post reports that the court in Paris ruled in favour of the Chinese firm in the dispute involving an arbitration award. The ruling will allow the firm to seize three presidential jets on routine maintenance in France as “security” for claims in a decades-long judicial matter between the foreign company and the Ogun State government.
“The case in which Zhongshan is trying to use every unorthodox means to strip our offshore assets is between the company and the Ogun State Government,” Mr Onanuga said, flaying Zhongshan which he said “has no solid ground to demand restitution from the Ogun State Government based on the facts regarding the 2007 contract between the company and the State Government to manage a free-trade zone”.
“When the contract with Ogun State was revoked in 2015, the company had only erected a perimeter fence on the land earmarked for a free trade zone,” he said.
“This arm-twisting tactic by the Chinese company is the latest in a long list of failed moves to attach Nigerian government-owned assets in foreign jurisdictions.
“The material facts in the transaction between the Ogun State Government and Zhongshan point to another P&ID case in which unscrupulous and questionable individuals falsely present themselves as investors with the sole objective of undercutting and scamming Governments in Africa.”
He claimed the foreign company “withheld vital information and misled the Judicial Court in Paris into attaching the Nigerian government’s presidential jets, which are on routine maintenance in France,” the spokesperson said.
In 2007, the foreign firm signed a contract with the Ogun State government to manage a free-trade zone but the contract was revoked by the state government in 2015.
Displeased, Zhongshan initiated an investment treaty arbitration against Nigeria under the bilateral investment treaty between the People’s Republic of China and Nigeria (the China-Nigeria BIT).
The arbitrators ruled that Nigeria was in breach of its obligations under the China-Nigeria BIT and awarded Zhongshan compensation amounting to millions of dollars.
Nigeria and Ogun State appealed the matter in “eight” jurisdictions including the United Kingdom and the United States.
The latest jurisdiction is in France, where three Nigerian presidential jets are on routine maintenance.
According to reports, the court in Paris held that the seizure of the jets was to “preserve the claim arising from the arbitration award dated 26 March 2021, made by an ad hoc arbitral tribunal”.
Modupe Gbadeyanka