Dram Oil and Trading Limited, an oil trading company, says the 2015 judgment between itself, and Vihama Energy Limited is not merely persuasive, but it is legally final, binding, and dispositive of the central liability issues.
The 2015 judgement determined that Vihama breached the tripartite agreement by unlawfully withholding National Petroleum Authority payments designated for Dram Oil and conferred enforceable rights upon Dram Oil by explicitly confirming Vihama’s liability.
Mr Nigel Heilpern, one of the Solicitors for Dram Oil, said the judgement also awarded costs in favour of Dram Oil, reinforcing the conclusion that the matter was heard, considered, and adjudicated to finality.
He said it ordered an audit solely to determine the quantum of sums owed, not to reopen or reassign liability.
Mr Heilpern said in essence, liability was judicially determined, and all that remained was arithmetic—not argument, adding that the matter was closed substantively and was ripe for execution.
He said under order of procedural rules of law, a judgment was deemed final when it determined the substantive rights of parties, as opposed to procedural or administrative matters.
He said that following the replacement of Justice Novisi immediately after her judgement in 2015, her replacement, Justice George Buadi’s 2019 decision in the same court to adopt Deloitte’s audit report was fundamentally flawed, both procedurally and substantively.
The Solicitors said it must be understood for what it was that an interlocutory order mistakenly treating an audit report as judicial reconsideration.
He said the reasons why the 2019 judgement was legally invalid and unsustainable was that Deloitte was appointed under the court’s enforcement jurisdiction, with a clear mandate to audit Vihama’s records to determine amounts payable to Dram Oil.
He said Deloitte’s decision to invert liability, claiming Dram Oil owed Vihama exceeded the court’s 2015 order and Deloitte’s scope as an auxiliary technical consultant.
“Courts cannot delegate adjudicative functions to third-party auditors and by endorsing Deloitte’s legal conclusions, the 2019 judgement improperly substituted procedural enforcement with substantive judicial review, a grave misdirection,” he added.
He said it was a cardinal principle of law that a final judgment could not be varied or reversed by a subsequent interlocutory decision, unless set aside through a formal appellate procedure.
Mr Heilpern said the 2015 judgment remained unchallenged and unimpeached, no appeal was lodged, no review was granted, and no stay of execution was ordered.
He said the 2019 adoption of the Deloitte report therefore had no power to displace or override the 2015 judgment.
He said Dram Oil was not afforded procedural parity in the Deloitte audit process and Deloitte relied heavily on unverified BOST/NPA data, failed to incorporate Dram Oil’s financial evidence, and dismissed material rebuttals.
“This breach of fair hearing principles renders both the audit and its adoption procedurally unfair and legally voidable,” the Counsel said.
He said a court exercising enforcement jurisdiction could not reopen or amend the underlying judgment it sought to enforce, and Justice Buadi’s adoption of a liability-reversing report was thus not just procedurally irregular but rather it was jurisdictionally impermissible.
Mr Heilpern said the 2015 judgment was not conditional; it was enforceable against Vihama as a debtor to Dram Oil and the audit instruction was a mechanism for assistance, not a precondition to enforceability.
He said as outlined above, the audit’s findings were invalid due to scope overreach, flawed methodology, and lack of procedural fairness and the enforcement application must ask the court to disregard the Deloitte audit entirely and return to the court’s own 2015 record and rationale.
The lawyer said the 2015 judgment was final, binding, and enforceable, having established Vihama’s liability and requiring only a post-judgment audit to determine the amount owed not to revisit fault.
Meanwhile, the 2019 ruling, which adopted Deloitte’s audit report, improperly contradicted that final judgment and must be set aside.
He said the Court would be expected to set aside the 2019 adoption of Deloitte’s report, which was produced in gross negligence, exceeded its mandate, disregarded material evidence, and wrongly attempted to reverse a final court finding.
It is also expected to enforce the 2015 final judgment in accordance with its original terms, using only proper, independent quantification mechanisms.
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