KUALA LUMPUR – The district court of Luxembourg has set aside the attachment order requested by the heirs to the sultan of Sulu over a claim against Malaysia, said law minister Datuk Seri Azalina Othman Said.
The attachment order, set aside on January 24, was based on two purported arbitral awards delivered unlawfully to the purported heirs, who were seeking compensation in a legal dispute with the Malaysian government over compensation for land in Sabah they claimed belonged to their ancestors.
“Malaysia has consistently refused to recognise the legitimacy of the purported arbitration orchestrated by the claimants,” the minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (law and institutional reforms) said in a statement.
Azalina said the attachment order was requested by the descendants of the Sulu sultanate on July 11, last year.
She said Malaysia immediately applied to obtain an interim relief by lifting the attachment to the Luxembourg court, which took place on December 5 before the court judge.
The two arbitral awards that the attachment order is based on had been awarded by an unlawfully appointed arbitrator, known as Gonzalo Stampa, who granted the claimants US$14.92 billion (RM63.34 billion).
Azalina added that Malaysia had consistently refused to recognise the legitimacy of their purported arbitration and had availed itself of all available legal remedies to invalidate the appointment of Stampa and his purported awards.
As such, the Spanish court that initially appointed Stampa also invalidated his appointment and nullified the alleged “preliminary award” he rendered in Madrid, following consistent efforts made by Malaysia to invalidate them, Azalina said.
Azalina said the decision justifies the government’s policy to defend Malaysia in every forum and ensure that the nation’s interests, sovereign immunity, and sovereignty, are always protected and preserved.
She said the French courts have also stayed the enforcement of the purported “final award” rendered by Stampa in France, pending the outcome of Malaysia’s action to set aside the “final award”.
The purported heirs of the Sulu sultan had made claims on two Luxembourg-based subsidiaries of Petronas in July last year after the attachment order on the arbitral awards was given.
Their claims on Petronas’ assets were part of their legal efforts for compensation for land in Sabah that the Sulu sultan had ceded to the British under an agreement that would see a sum of money paid to the sultan annually.
The Malaysian government stopped the payment in 2013 after the Lahad Datu incursion that year. – The Vibes, January 26, 2023
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