Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs Anil Nandlall believes that it is in Guyana’s interest to stop the enforcement of an arbitral award in favour of US company ConocoPhillips.
That company sought and acquired through the High Court, a ruling to register its arbitral award which claims monies owed to Venezuela and its state-owned oil company, PDVSA.
In 2019, ConocoPhillips obtained an arbitral award valuing a large sum of money against the Venezuelan Government. The decision followed a moved by the Bolivarian Republic to nationalise assets belonging to the US company.
Subsequently, ConocoPhillips moved to enforce the award in countries where PDVSA has assets including Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, the United Kingdom and Hong Kong.
This year, the US company approached the local High Court seeking a similar ruling before Justice Gino Persaud who sought to make the AG a party to the case. However, he disagreed with the AG’s argument on the matter and they have since been involved in a public debate.
The Attorney General argued that enforcing the arbitral award would contradict Guyana’s “public policy.”
He said this is given the ongoing border controversy with Venezuela and commitment by both sides to desist from escalating the matter until the International Court of Justice delivers its ruling.
“In that volatile environment, how do you think the Venezuelan government will view a court in Guyana permitting an American company to take away money owed to Venezuela by Guyana?” Nandlall questioned during his weekly programme ‘Issues in the News’ Tuesday night.
Reports are that the Guyana Government’s escrow account for the payment to Venezuela has a deposit of US$32.01 million under the PetroCaribe agreement.
However, the Judge said the AG’s submission was designed to intimidate the court, noting that potential investors must not think that international arbitral awards are problematic to recognise, register and enforce in Guyana
On Tuesday evening, the Attorney General said the Government would not have objected to the enforcement of the award in Guyana if there was no ongoing dispute.
“In the ordinary course of things, the State would pay no interest, would have no objection to the registration and enforcement,” he noted.
He added that the executive determines the national policy of a country and “if anything goes wrong, it is the executive that has to answer for the national security of this country, it is the executive that has to answer for national sovereignty of the country.”
The AG plans to appeal the case.
It must be noted that the lawyer representing ConocoPhillips is Attorney-at-Law and Leader of the Alliance For Change (AFC) Nigel Hughes.
