OSG examines Sabah arbitral awards papers

The team formed by Solicitor General Menardo Guevarra to look into the wider implications of the arbitral award in favor of the heirs of the sultanate of Sulu is now in consolidation phase.

"So many reference materials have been examined by the team," said Guevarra when asked about the issue.

In early August, the Office of Solicitor General formed a special task force to study the implications of the arbitral award in favor of the heirs of the sultanate of Sulu.

"We've begun collating reference materials for our study, but this task will require a lot of manhours to complete," the SolGen said.

Guevarra added: "If deemed necessary, we'll consider that possibility after we have studied the matter well enough, right now, no party involved in the arbitration has approached the government for any kind of intervention."

The OSG is carefully studying the legal and constitutional implications of the $14.92 billion award from a French arbitration court to compensate the descendants of the last Sulu Sultan.

Guevarra said his office will take part in the rapidly developing issue on the Sultanate claims which already rocked Malaysia after lawyers of the Sulu royal family seized $2 billion worth of overseas assets of state oil company Petronas on the strength of the international tribunal's ruling.

The issue stemmed from the agreement made by the Sultan of Sulu with a British trading company in 1878 for the exploitation of resources in Sabah in Borneo, which is currently under Malaysian control.
Malaysia took over the regular payment to the heirs of Sabah after its independence from British rule. But in 2013, it decided to stop the payments altogether.

The Malaysian government offered to resume the payments in 2019, but it was rejected by the heirs, who wanted to renegotiate the deal after fuel and oil resources were discovered in Sabah.

Initially, the heirs sought arbitration in Spain, but it was later transferred to French courts instead.