Thread by @pace_nik

JP Morgan argued in court this week that they did not have a duty of care to refuse to pay out a billion dollars even if they suspected fraud. Nigeria is suing the bank for $875m over their role in the Shell/Eni OPL 245 deal.
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JP Morgan had asked the High Court to dismiss Nigeria’s $875m claim against them. The High Court turned down their request, JP Morgan on Wednesday and Thursday argued this decision should be overturned this in the court of appeal.

Under English law banks have a duty of care to their customers to not comply with payment instructions if a reasonable and honest banker would consider that there was a real possibility that there was an attempt to misappropriate funds. This is called the ‘Quincecare’ Duty.

JP Morgan is claiming that their contract with Nigerian excluded this duty. Meaning that Nigeria's lawsuit should be dismissed. Nigerian is claiming that JP Morgan should have realised it couldn’t trust the senior Nigerian officials it was taking instructions from in this case.

Nigeria has alleged in court that the deal was “fraudulent and corrupt” involving ministers and officials including the President, Petroleum minister, Attorney General and Finance Minister. The former officials who aren't part of the case have all denied wrongdoing.

JP Morgan has disclosed that after Swiss and Lebanese banks sent back attempted transfers they filed six suspicious activity reports with UK authorities, who did not stop the transactions at the time.

During the hearings one of the judges, Sir Bernard Rix, commented that as we've seen in Malaysia "The Government does things, but they're stealing from the people... is this a valid settlement of a dispute or a way of putting money in people's pockets?"

The case continues and we can probably expect to hear a ruling from the court of appeal on whether the lawsuit can go to trial in a couple of weeks time.