PETALING JAYA: Putrajaya has said the award of US$14.9 billion by a French arbitration court to the self-proclaimed heirs of the late sultan of Sulu has no legal basis.
The government said this in the submission of its defence at the Hague Court of Appeal on Monday. The court had also heard the application brought by the Sulu claimants.
“The claimants’ request is inadmissible and must in any case be denied,” the government’s Sulu Secretariat said in a statement.
It also said that Malaysia maintained that there was no arbitration agreement to provide any basis for any purported arbitration, while the commencement of a commercial arbitration was “disingenuous and a blatant abuse of international commercial arbitration process”.
“This is an attempt to hold a sovereign state to ransom, and the continued existence of the award tarnishes the reputation of the globally respected arbitration system,” it said.
The secretariat also said Putrajaya would be litigating across Europe to ensure that this scam was exposed and the award overturned.
A French arbitration court in February last year ordered Malaysia to pay the sum to the descendants of the last sultan of Sulu.
The dispute originated from a deal signed in 1878 between two European colonists and the sultan for the use of his territory in present-day Malaysia.
Malaysia honoured the agreement and made payments of about US$1,000 a year until 2013, after an incursion by armed men into Lahad Datu, along the eastern coast of Sabah. - FMT
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