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The report, based on a close examination of Michael Quinn’s career, drawn from public records, leaked documents and interviews with friends and former associates, showed that Quinn who died of cancer in 2015 had a record of projects that ended in disappointment, lawsuits and corruption allegations.
Last week, a UK court ruled that Nigeria must pay the firm $9.6 billion or have its assets to the tune of that amount seized by the firm. The Federal Government said it would appeal the UK court judgment.
Suggesting that the project was a sham ab initio, a quote in the Bloomberg report said:
“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.”
Detailing the genesis of the failed project, the report said in 2008 the Nigerian government said it would end flaring by using oilfield gas to generate electricity. The then minister of petroleum resources acknowledged that the challenge would be “enormous.”
“Officials struggled to persuade big multinationals to invest in the required infrastructure, so concessions were granted to 13 smaller companies, some virtually unknown. One was Process and Industrial Developments Ltd., or P&ID, which was registered in the British Virgin Islands but had no website or track record. Its chairman was Michael “Mick” Quinn,” the report said.
The report noted that 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 as the raw material would be supplied for free, to be treated and returned at no cost while 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.”
“Then the plan fell apart. The government failed to secure any waste gas from oil companies, let alone link up the necessary pipeline, and the plant was never built. In 2012, P&ID notified the oil ministry that it was suing for breach of contract in a London arbitration forum,” according to the report.
“It also revealed that in the summer of 2018, a man who had worked for Quinn contacted Joseph Pizzurro, a veteran New York lawyer hired by Nigeria to lead its defence in United States, seeking to talk about the P&ID case.
“The caller was said to have told Pizzurro that Quinn had conspired with officials to profit from government projects that were doomed from the start and that P&ID was one of at least three such lawsuits involving Quinn.
“The caller couldn’t provide enough evidence to substantiate his claims, though, and he didn’t contact Pizzurro again,” the Bloomberg report said.
According to Bloomberg, throughout the 2000s, Quinn lived a kind of double life, divided between Nigeria and a comfortable suburban house near Dublin.
The report said Quinn befriended people in the corridors of power to put him in good stead in the country’s freewheeling capitalism.
“Quinn nevertheless thrived, befriending presidents and civil servants alike. He and Cahill used a company called Marshpearl to bid for lucrative military contracts, initially registering the name in Ireland, then in 1999 using the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca & Co. to create Marshpearl Ltd. in the British Virgin Islands.
