Malaysia is scrambling to protect its assets as the descendants of the last sultan of the remote Philippine region of Sulu look to enforce a $15 billion arbitration award in a dispute over a colonial-era land deal.
In 1878, two European colonists signed a deal with the sultan for the use of his territory in present-day Malaysia – an agreement that independent Malaysia honoured until 2013, paying the monarch's descendants about $1,000 a year.
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