No. There are no civil or criminal proceedings against Stampa outside Spain, and none at all against Therium in this case. What happened in June 2024 was that two Luxembourg subsidiaries of Petronas [see FAQ “Enforcing Arbitral Award in Courts” ] launched a discovery proceeding in New York. The companies in this proceeding have asked a judge to order Therium and a series of Spanish banks to disclose “illegal” payments made to Stampa in order to render his Award. This is what’s known as a “fishing expedition”. They have no facts, but they are hoping to generate noise and maybe find something to object to.

Spoiler alert: there are no illegal payments, and Malaysia has produced no evidence or suggestion of any. This may be a case of one side having engaged in dirty tricks assuming that the other side has done the same, and accusing it accordingly. We (obviously) have no control over Therium and the banks, so we can’t tell you whether they’ll resist the subpoenas on principle. But we’re confident they have nothing to hide.

It’s ironic that the two Petronas Luxembourg subsidiaries, associated with a $2 billion+ transaction in Azerbaijan, should be the entities making this demand in New York. Given Malaysia’s appalling record for corruption in the US, and the tendency of New York authorities to be fixated on source of funds (as Jho Low and his political friends know) this might have been an unwise approach…