The descendants of the Sultan of Sulu will continue enforcing a $15-billion French arbitral award against Malaysia over a centuries-old deal on the territory of Sabah.
A Luxembourg court earlier ordered the release or cancellation of the seizure of two Luxembourg-based subsidiaries of the Malaysian state oil firm Petronas in July 2022, ABS-CBN News reported.
The seizure, the ABS-CBN report said, is based on a French arbitral ruling in March 2022 which ordered Malaysia to pay the descendants $14.9 billion (over P800 billion) as compensation over land in Sabah which the heirs said the Sultan of Sulu leased to the colonial British—a decision Malaysia has refused to recognize.
Malaysia had also petitioned the court to declare the seizure invalid, the report said.
But district judge Frederic Mersch said another appropriate court should decide on invalidity and instead ruled only to release the seizure and transfer of assets, based on a machine-translated copy of the French-language ruling obtained by ABS-CBN News.
The court said the eight claimants were not justified in listing the address of their law firm in Makati City, Philippines as theirs instead of their actual residences, despite the heirs citing personal security due to the financial stakes of the dispute, ABS-CBN News reported
Malaysia had argued the lack of actual addresses would affect the service of documents and other actions in the case.
A lawyer meanwhile said the group or descendants are not asking for help from the Philippine government over the matter.
Malaysian law minister Azalina Othman Said, quoted by ABS-CBN, on Thursday called the Luxembourg court’s ruling a “significant victory”.
“This decision vindicates the Government’s policy to vigorously defend Malaysia in every forum to ensure that Malaysia’s interests, sovereign immunity and sovereignty are protected and preserved at all times. The Government will spare no effort to this end,” Said said in a statement.
However, Paul Cohen, the London-based lawyer of the Sulu sultan’s heirs, downplayed the decision’s impact on enforcing the separate French arbitral ruling.
“This apparent triumph deeply misrepresented the state of play. A good save by the goalie in a football match in the last ten minutes of a match when you are five goals down is worthy of a cheer: It doesn’t constitute a win,” Cohen said in a statement sent to ABS-CBN News.
The administration of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has yet to issue a statement on the matter.
“The judge made clear – what the Malaysian press release did not – that he is not making a judgment either way on the merits of the case in Luxembourg, which continues. And, for the avoidance of doubt, he was not ruling on the Claim, the Arbitration, the $14.9 billion award or the decision to take the enforcement action to Luxembourg. But he is concerned that the paperwork should have had the addresses,” Cohen said.