An incredible $15 billion lawsuit between descendants of the Sultan of Malaysia and Borneo

It is a $15 billion (€14 billion) arbitration award that has scared Malaysia and surprised even specialists in this type of procedure. In addition to its exceptional magnitude, the dispute stems from a treaty signed one hundred and forty-five years ago between two European colonizing adventurers and a spirit living in the north of the island of Borneo, written in an ancient Malay dialect that is difficult to decipher. translated.

Eight descendants of the vanished kingdom, one of whom recently died, accused Malaysia, which inherited the old contract from British settlers, in 2013 for stopping the payment of $5,300, then 5,300 ringgit (€1,074) they had received annually since 1878.

However, the enforcement of this extraordinary award, issued in Paris in February 2022, has been stayed by the decision of the Paris Court of Appeal on Tuesday, June 6, regarding the jurisdiction of the arbitration. A few days before this decisive date, the Minister of Justice of Malaysia, Azalina Othman Said, left for the French capital.

Reconquest and repression

In the private salon of the palace on the Champs-Élysées, where he receives the worldSurrounded by lawyers, diplomats and communications consultants, the minister criticizes the decision and the disproportionate amount, as well as “undermining Malaysia’s sovereignty”.

“The case is exceptional, observes Thomas Clay, an international arbitrator and professor of law at Paris I-Pantheon-Sorbonne University. History is incredible and then 15 billion cases with one arbitrator is unheard of. »

This arbitration would probably never have seen the light of day if Jamalul Kiram III, a self-proclaimed descendant of the Sultan of Sultans, had not undertaken to reconquer his ancestral lands in 2013. Of the sultanate that once stretched from the island of Borneo to the southern Philippines, nothing remains but its past glory. In 2013, when the journalist New York Times Arriving at the royal seat in a remote suburb of Manila, he encounters a modest two-story pavilion bearing a sign on its facade. Sultanate of Sulu and North Borneo.

Inside, an elderly Sultan on dialysis receives rare visitors. The 73-year-old, who is half-blind, sent 235 mercenaries from the Philippines in February 2013 to conquer Sabah, a poor region of 3.5 million people covered in rainforest. sandy beaches.