Is One Of The World\u2019s Biggest Lawsuits Built On A Sham? 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.
A dying Irishman went for one last big score in Nigeria. The project failed, but a London tribunal says his company’s owed $9 billion and counting.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 “flaring.
Quinn knew powerful people, including the petroleum minister, who guaranteed P&ID a 20-year supply of “wet,” 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.
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’t around to answer them; he died of cancer in 2015.
Quinn’s 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’s companies, as a potential savior of Irish industry. Kent had recently won 3 million Irish pounds from the European Union to explore cleaner technology for making steel—potentially a huge boon.
By then, Quinn had developed a fearsome reputation. Several former associates told Businessweek they 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 “the chairman,” and he employed a man with a pugilist’s squashed nose to drive guests around Dublin, apparently without great regard for red lights.
One of the few people who would speak on the record about Quinn’s 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’t 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.
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’s plan says Quinn’s staff told Mecar they would handle bidding, contracts, and billing. Mecar’s managers “do not want to know the details as they would be embarrassed with Belgian authorities and U.S. owners,” the memo said.
Shown the memo at the Hilton bar, Murray said, “Very clever.” He didn’t see anything improper in the deal’s structure but added, “I wasn’t directly involved.” A spokesman for Mecar’s 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.It’s said that in Nigeria you can go from pauper to millionaire overnight and back again just as quickly.
Gerry Nash, Trinitron’s former project director, said in a statement that test kit production at the factory in Nigeria hadn’t progressed because the health ministry wouldn’t buy the kits locally. “People in the Nigerian Ministries were more interested in picking up commissions on imported products,” he wrote.
Nigeria Latest News, Nigeria Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Man Who Staged Wedding Without Reception Reveals How He Convinced Family To Support Idea | Sahara ReportersMan Who Staged Wedding Without Reception Reveals How He Convinced Family To Support Idea | Sahara Reporters Speaking with SaharaReporters on Tuesday, Yusuf, said that the decision was one of the biggest he ever took in his life. READ MORE:
Read more »
FIBA World Cup: Nigeria saves face with emphatic victory over KoreaA spirited fight from Nigeria inspired them to their first win at the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2019 after seeing off Korea 108-66 in a...
Read more »
Ihedioha’s first 100 days in office | The Guardian Nigeria News - Nigeria and World NewsIn a short while from now, precisely September 6, 2019, governors from across the states of the federation would be marking what has, of recent, been known as “first 100 days in office.”
Read more »
Wayde van Niekerk pulls out of World Athletics Championships | The Guardian Nigeria News - Nigeria and World NewsOlympic champion, Wayde van Niekerk will not defend his world 400m title at this month’s World Championships in Doha, reports BBC.
Read more »
Death Toll In Niger Tanker Explosion Rises To Six | Sahara ReportersDeath Toll In Niger Tanker Explosion Rises To Six | Sahara Reporters “We have lost another three people, one on transit to Kano, another one in Kaduna, while one died receiving treatment.' READ MORE:
Read more »