Buhari Terminates Debt Recovery Contract Awarded To Trobell By AGF, Malami

President Muhammadu Buhari has terminated the debt recovery
contract awarded to Trobell International Limited by Abubakar
Malami, the attorney-general of the federation, because of the
“incredible” commission to be paid, TheCable report.

Trobell was engaged by Malami to recover the estimated $43
billion unpaid arrears to Nigeria from the production sharing
contracts (PSCs) with multinational companies — and the commission
was set at five percent.

Effectively, Trobell would be pocketing $2.15 billion — or N774
billion — as commission.

By comparison, the 2019 budget of Lagos, the most economically
viable state in the country, is N874 billion.

But in a letter to Malami dated October 16, 2019, Abba Kyari,
the chief of staff to the president, said Buhari has directed that
the minister should immediately “comply with Mr. President’s
directives of March 4, 2019, and terminate the Recovery Contract
which the Ministry of Justice had signed with Trobell International
Limited regarding the purported recovery of $43.747b from the PSCs
pursuant to the consent judgement of the Supreme Court of April 5,
2018.”

According to presidency sources, Buhari was alarmed at the
“staggering commission” to Trobell for simply writing letters of
demand to the oil companies after the supreme court-ordered
settlement of the dispute.

Buhari was said to have questioned how Malami arrived at the
five percent commission for a recovery that the federal government
can do by itself without engaging any company.

This development echoes the dubious commission payments to
Nigerian lawyers for the return of $321 million Abacha Loot from
Switzerland — even though a Swiss attorney, Enrico Monfrini, did
all the recovery over a period of seven years.

Malami was only expected to formally send a request to the Swiss
government for the final return of the money to the country. He,
instead, engaged another set of lawyers to write the letter and
paid them what TheCable now understands to be $17 million (as
against the reported $15 million).

Cable Foundation, partners to TheCable, had sent a freedom of
information (FoI) request to Malami over the Switzerland case which
he refused to respond to and the court case filed by the foundation
was thrown out by the judge.

A similar request sent by TheCable to Malami in 2018 requesting
full information on the engagement of Trobell for the recovery of
the $43 billion PSC backlog from the oil companies went
unreplied.

However, TheCable understands that Buhari is unhappy that
despite his earlier instruction that the contract be terminated,
Malami did not comply.

Nigeria had awarded PSCs to the multinational oil companies in
1993 for exploration in deep offshore and inland basis.

The federation was supposed to automatically get more share of
the oil revenue after a number of years but the terms were not
reviewed.

Nigeria’s unpaid share of the revenue was estimated at $62
billion from 2008 to 2018 in a suit filed by the 36 states of the
federation.

The supreme court entered into a consent judgment in April 2018
as a final resolution of the dispute.