Billionaire Lakshmi Mittal’s younger brother is effectively getting a helping hand — and a possible way out of financial distress — from Nigerian taxpayers, after the country’s government agreed to pay his company almost $500 million to settle a contract dispute over a deal that a previous administration said was tarnished by fraud.

Pramod Mittal, whose career in the steel industry has been less glittering than his better-known sibling — the tycoon behind the €20 billion ($21.2 billion) ArcelorMittal SA conglomerate —, has a string of abandoned factories and a trail of unpaid debts to his name. Five years ago, his Isle of Man-registered Global Steel Holdings Ltd., or GSH, was put into liquidation over $167 million owed to Moorgate Industries Ltd., a company spun off from one of the world’s biggest steel traders.