Sulu heirs ‘deceitful’, says Azalina on why attachment order set aside

 

Azalina Othman Said says Putrajaya will continue in its effort to protect and preserve Malaysia’s interests and sovereignty.

PETALING JAYA: The district court of Luxembourg had decided to set aside an attachment order requested by heirs of the late sultan of Sulu due to their conduct, says law and institutional reform minister Azalina Othman Said.

In a statement, Azalina said the court found that the heirs had opted not to reveal their real addresses, adding that this omission was “significant” to the court.

“(The court) found that the claimants’ conduct impeded the service of documents and the enforcement of the potential judgment to be rendered against them.

“According to the court, the claimants’ conduct constituted a ‘manifestly illicit hardship’ that is detrimental to Malaysia,” she said.

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Azalina hit out at the claimants, saying it was typical of their “deceitful and fraudulent” conduct in making their claim against Malaysia.

She reiterated that Putrajaya will continue in its effort to protect and preserve Malaysia’s interests and sovereignty while taking necessary action to “put an end to the claimants’ fictitious claim”.

The district court of Luxembourg set aside the attachment order last Tuesday, after it was given on July 11, 2022.

Two Luxembourg-based subsidiaries of Petronas were seized by court bailiffs in July 2022 as part of the heirs’ effort to claim the award, after the attachment order was given.

Malaysia immediately applied to the district court of Luxembourg to set aside the attachment order as part of interim relief. The hearing took place on Dec 5.

In February 2022, a French arbitration court instructed Putrajaya to pay US$14.92 billion (RM62.59 billion) to the descendants of the last sultan of Sulu.

The arbitrator, Gonzalo Stampa, ruled that Malaysia had violated the 1878 agreements between the old Sulu kingdom in the Philippines and a representative of the British North Borneo Company that used to administer what is now Sabah.

The arbitration process originated in Spain but was moved to Paris.

Under the 1878 agreements, then sultan of Sulu, Sultan Jamal Al Alam, ceded sovereignty over large parts of Sabah to Baron de Overbeck, the then maharaja of Sabah, and British North Borneo Company’s Alfred Dent, who agreed that they and their future heirs were to pay the heirs of the sultan 5,000 Mexican dollars annually.

In 1936, the last formally recognised sultan of Sulu, Jamalul Kiram II, died without heirs. Payments temporarily ceased until North Borneo High Court Chief Justice Charles F Macaskie named nine court-appointed heirs in 1939.

Although Malaysia took over these payments when it became the successor of the agreement following Sabah’s independence and the formation of Malaysia in 1963, these payments – equivalent to RM5,300 a year – ceased in 2013 after an incursion by armed men into Lahad Datu, along the eastern coast of Sabah. - FMT