Malaysia emerges victorious in $15 billion dispute with Sulu heirs.
Malaysia has won an appeal against enforcing a partial award to the heirs of a former sultan who won $15 billion in an arbitration over a colonial-era land deal. The Paris Court of Appeal found the case arbitrator had wrongly upheld his jurisdiction. The win for Malaysia implies the final award will be annulled and the descendants' efforts to seize Malaysian assets will end. The dispute stems from an 1878 deal signed between European colonists and the Sultan of Sulu for use of his territory, which spanned islands in the southern Philippines and parts of present-day Malaysia on Borneo island.