A London Court has denied Nigeria a bid to claim compensation from Glencore, a British subsidiary of mining and trading group, over bribes paid to Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC)
, lawyers representing the country told London’s Southwark crown court that Nigerian officials should be permitted to address the court on November 2 and 3.
In written arguments, Nigeria said it is “an identifiable victim of Glencore’s admitted criminal activity”, as two of the charges to which the firm has pleaded guilty, relate to payments made to NNPC officials. On the contrary, Nigeria’s lawyers said Glencore is not prepared to engage on the issue of compensation.
She also said the contention that Glencore is “hiding behind the SFO to avoid paying anything to Nigeria is simply untrue”.Sam Tate, a partner at Reynolds Porter Chamberlain , a UK law firm, which represented Nigeria, told reporters after the hearing that the ruling showed the “very urgent need to reform the rules on compensating foreign countries where we have foreign bribery offences”.