The intricate history dates back to an 1878 agreement between the sultan of a territory that stretches between Borneo and the Philippines and two European traders. In 2013, Malaysia suspended payments due to an attack and refuses to pay the $15 billion it owes to the plaintiffs. The latter began attacking the foreign assets of Petronas, the state oil company.
Kuala Lumpur () – The Minister of Justice in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Seri Azalina binti Othman Said, announced a series of measures against the “heirs” of the Sulu Sultanate after Luxembourg issued an embargo notice at the beginning of this month against overseas assets belonging to Petronas, Malaysia’s state oil company.
Since 2019, Sulu’s self-proclaimed heirs, now Filipino citizens, have been demanding billions of dollars in compensation from Malaysia, which stopped paying them in 2013 after their supporters launched an attack in Sabah state.
Last year, the Paris Court of Appeal had ordered Malaysia to pay some $15 billion to the Sulu plaintiffs, who seized Petronas assets in Europe. The embargo had originally been upheld by European courts, but has now been lifted.
The tangled history of the Sulu claim dates back to an agreement made in 1878 between the Sultan of Sulu at the time, whose lands stretched from the southern Philippines to what is now Sabah in the Malaysian state of Borneo, with two traders Europeans. The Sultan of Sulu agreed to cede their land in North Borneo to them in exchange for an annual payment.
More technically, according to some experts, the dispute originates from the different translations of the 1878 agreement into Spanish, Malay and English. The original agreement clearly used the term “assign”, not “rent”, meaning that legal attacks by the current Sulu claimants on the Malaysian government affecting Petronas assets would be illegitimate.
Malaysia continued to pay Sulu’s heirs about RM5,300 a year (equivalent to $1,200) after Sabah’s incorporation into the Federation of Malaysia in 1963. It only stopped them after supporters of a self-proclaimed Sulu heir carried out a riot in 2013. attack in which several citizens and members of the police were killed.
The people of Sabah themselves they reject the claims of Sulu, declaring them void after his vote to join the Federation.
In early March, Minister Datuk Seri Azalina announced that former Malaysian Attorney General Sri Tommy Thomas will be barred from commenting further on Sulu’s lawsuit after he published a note explaining the case. Thomas had sent a letter to the Sulu plaintiffs in 2019 that had not been approved by the cabinet at the time.
According to the minister – who announced investigations to see if any citizen had supported the legal assault on Petronas or if Sulu’s heirs had ties to the terrorist group Royal Sulu Forces – the Sulu plaintiffs should have gone to the International Criminal Court of La Haya instead of resorting to commercial arbitration. In addition, the minister pointed out that the French courts are delaying the decision to award the French shares of Petronas to the “heirs” of Sulu until the official response from Malaysia is known.
