There’s been much confusion since the Financial Times reported that the successors-in-interest to the last Sultan of Sulu have seized two Luxembourg-incorporated subsidiaries of Petronas. This comes 4 months after a French arbitration court ordered Malaysia to pay US$14.9 billion the claimants to honour a deal the then-sultan of Sulu signed in 1848 with a British trading company over the use of his territory -- now known as the Malaysian Territory of Sabah. Melisa Idris speaks to Dr Oh Ei Sun Senior Fellow at the Singapore Institute of International Affairs to make sense of these latest developments.