A&V Oil has won its case against the now-defunct state-owned energy company Petrotrin and stands to benefit from close to $1 billion payment for the failure to honour outstanding bills on the premise that fake invoices were submitted for oil it never supplied.

The company, owned by a close friend of the Prime Minister, now stands to receive the $84 million being held in escrow, to settle an unpaid invoice for crude oil it supplied and damages which are yet to be quantified but could bring the total sum owed to the operator to $1 billion.

These were the findings and decisions by arbiters Sir Dennis Byron, former president of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), who also served as chairman of the arbitration panel; Lord David Hope and retired CCJ judge Humphrey Stollmeyer, in the arbitration ruling between A&V and Petrotrin, according to details obtained by Sunday Newsday.

In the unanimous decision, the three arbiters held that Petrotrin failed to establish A&V engaged in seal tampering or any inappropriate practices in the process of delivering crude oil and was entitled to payment.

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