Nigeria: More Trouble As Chinese Investor Seizes Nigeria's Houses in UK

22 August 2024
Leadership (Abuja)
By Innocent Odoh

Following its recent success in securing an order from a French court to confiscate Nigerian properties over a breach of a contractual agreement by Ogun State of Nigeria, Zhongshang Fucheng has moved to take over Nigeria's assets in Europe and North America to collect up to $70 million from a 2021 arbitration verdict.

The investment group is desperate to recover up to $70 million in arbitration awards from Nigeria, and it has taken steps to put two of Nigeria's residential structures in the UK it confiscated for sale on global online marketplace eBay for an estimated $2.2 million.

Last Wednesday, the Chinese firm announced that it had seized three presidential jets from Nigeria. It later released one to convey the Nigerian President Bola Tinubu to a function in France this week. Despite saying it is open to negotiation with the Nigerian government, the firm has intensified efforts to confiscate Nigerian assets wherever it may find them.

The Chinese firm took possession of the Nigerian properties at number 15, Aigburth Hall Road, Liverpool, and Beech Lodge, 49, Calderstones Road, Liverpool, United Kingdom, in June 2024, years after Nigeria failed to settle an arbitration judgement handed down in 2021.

According to court documents, Zhongshang was awarded $55,675,000 plus interest of $9,400,000 and costs of £2,864,445 as of the March 26, 2021 arbitration verdict. The firm said Ogun State violated a 2001 trade treaty between Nigeria and China when its rights to a free trade zone were rescinded in 2016.

The company dragged Nigeria before the arbitration panel in the UK in 2018, alleging that Nigeria allowed its federal organs like the police, immigration and export processing authority to be deployed by Ogun State without due process. Court documents said two Zhongshang executives were expelled from

Nigeria between mid and late 2016 after one of them had allegedly been detained and tortured by the police.

Nigeria is not new to this kind of controversy. A similar issue occurred with P&ID, where a court awarded $11 billion to the consortium over Nigeria's alleged breach of contract. Nigeria was, however, lucky that, on appeal, it won the case against P&ID following the firm's alleged bribery.

It is difficult to tell whether Nigeria can escape this onslaught from the Chinese firm because this might differ from the P&ID.

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