Oil giants Eni and Shell go on trial in Milan on Monday, charged with bribery and corruption in the purchase of an offshore oilfield in Nigeria.
Eni CEO Claudio Descalzi, his predecessor Paolo Scaroni and several officials from Eni and Shell are among those facing the judge.
Ex-Nigerian oil minister Dan Etete is also on trial.
Eni — also charged with corruption in Algeria in a separate trial — and Shell stand accused of handing out bribes during the 2011 purchase of OPL245, an offshore oil block estimated to hold 9 billion barrels of crude, for $1.3 billion.
Both companies deny the charges against them.
“Eni expresses its full confidence in the judicial process and that the trial will ascertain and confirm the correctness and integrity of its conduct,” the Italian firm said in a statement.
The agreement allegedly saw Nigeria’s former president Goodluck Jonathan and his oil minister Etete pocket bribes, according to corruption watchdog Global Witness.
“Eni and Shell closed the deal with the government without the involvement of an intermediary. The money… was deposited into an account owned by the Nigerian government,” said Eni, which has regularly reaffirmed its trust in Descalzi.
Foremost litigation
Descalzi made it clear remaining year that shell and Eni had no longer been “concerned in the authorities’ choice on a way to use the cash”.
Shell also stated it believed the judges might conclude there was no case towards them, including “there may be no region for bribery or corruption in our agency.”
The 2011 address the Nigerian government aimed to give up years of litigation over the opl245 block among shell and Dan Etete’s oil and gas Malabu organisation.
A former oil minister below the dictator Sani Abacha, Etete appropriated the block in 1998, promoting it to Malabu, a business enterprise he secretly owned.
The licence turned into subsequently revoked by the government after which transferred to shell and then again to Malabu, resulting in predominant litigation. After taking office in 2010, President Goodluck Jonathan resumed negotiations on the incredibly coveted block.
Consistent with worldwide witness, the deal led to $1.1 billion being paid into an account in London opened by way of authority’s officers — and going at once to Etete — and $210 million to the government.
Electronic mail path
e-mail exchanges between shell management referred to by international witness, and seen with the aid of afp, advocate that shell turned into aware the money become probably to be funnelled to people, such as Etete and Jonathan.
“Etete can odor the cash,” a shell official wrote in 2010, whilst some other said, “the president (Jonathan) is stimulated to look 245 closed quickly –- driven through expectancies approximately the proceeds that Malabu will get hold of and political contributions so that it will glide as a consequence.”
Nigeria’s anti-graft business enterprise, the EFCC, filed corruption charges towards shell and Eni in March 2017, accusing 11 defendants, such as Etete, of “reliable corruption” in reference to the deal.
Present day president, Muhammadu Buhari, has pledged to combat relentlessly towards the “cancer of corruption” that plagues Africa’s largest oil producer.
However in a letter leaked in February from justice minister, Abubakar Malami, to Buhari dating from September, the minister requested the president to break the EFCC research.
Inside the letter Malami expressed subject that the case did not comprise sufficient evidence to carry the principle defendants to justice and that a trial would be a humiliation.
Worldwide witness called for justice, saying that “$1.1 billion can help quite a few human beings in a rustic like Nigeria” where “eighty percentage of residents stay on less than bucks an afternoon”
