KUALA LUMPUR – Luxembourg court bailiffs issued fresh seizure orders for two units of national oil firm Petronas as part of a bid to enforce a US$15 billion (RM66.01 billion) award won by the heirs of the Sulu sultanate against Malaysia, Reuters reported today.
According to the heirs’ lawyer and court documents sighted by the news agency, the descendants of the defunct Sulu sultanate are seeking to enforce a US$14.9 billion award granted to them by a French arbitration court last year.
The report also noted that Malaysia did not participate in the arbitration, while maintaining the process was illegal. Malaysia also obtained a stay on the award in France but the ruling remains enforceable overseas under a United Nations treaty on arbitration.
The Petronas Azerbaijan (Shah Deniz) and Petronas South Caucasus subsidiaries were first seized in July 2022.
Law minister Datuk Seri Azalina Othman Said however said last month that the order had been set aside by a Luxembourg district court.
Luxembourg court bailiffs issued a second seizure order on the units and related bank accounts, according to court documents shared by the heirs’ lawyer, Paul Cohen, on Tuesday.
Cohen, of British law firm 4-5 Gray’s Inn Square, told Reuters the Luxembourg district court had indeed lifted the first seizure order on a minor issue that has since been addressed, but had not made a judgement on the merits of the arbitration.
“There was a technical ruling that has now been effectively dealt with, and the freezing orders are once more in place on the Petronas assets in Luxembourg,” he was quoted as saying via email.
The purported heirs of the Sulu sultanate had made claims on two Luxembourg-based subsidiaries of Petronas in July last year after the attachment order on the arbitral awards was granted.
Their claims on Petronas’ assets were part of their legal efforts to get 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, February 16, 2023
