Claudio Descalzi, CEO of Italian energy company Eni talks to media at the Presidential Palace in Nicosia, Cyprus April 25, 2018.
MILAN, Italy--A Milan court acquitted energy company Eni, its chief executive and Royal Dutch Shell on Wednesday in the oil industry's biggest corruption case revolving around the $1.3 billion acquisition of a Nigerian oilfield a decade ago.
The sentence, read out in court by judge Marco Tremolada, came more than three years after the trial first began and after 74 hearings. Tremolada said the companies and defendants had been acquitted as there was no case to answer.
The Nigerian government said it was surprised and disappointed by the verdict and would consider whether to appeal once its lawyers had read the written judgment. Rulings in Italy can be appealed and only become enforceable once they are final. Tremolada said the judges would use all the 90 days permitted by law to compile their written judgement.
The long-running case revolved around a deal in which Eni and Shell acquired the OPL 245 offshore oilfield in Nigeria. Under a 2011 agreement, Malabu Oil and Gas, owned by former Nigerian oil minister Dan Etete, handed OPL 245 back to Nigeria while in parallel Shell and Eni paid Nigeria $1.3 billion to settle a long-standing dispute over the oilfield's ownership.
Prosecutors alleged that just under $1.1 billion of that amount was siphoned off to politicians and middlemen, including Etete, a convicted money launderer who acquired the field in 1998 when he was oil minister under military ruler Sani Abacha. Prosecutors had called for Eni and Shell to be fined, for a number of past and present managers from both firms, including Eni Chief Executive Claudio Descalzi, to be jailed and for $1.1 billion to be confiscated from the defendants.
The prosecutors declined to comment on the verdict. The defendants had all denied any wrongdoing.
"This is a huge blow for natural resource governance and transparency in Nigeria," said Matthew Page, associate fellow at the Chatham House Africa programme. "The OPL 245 deal has been a multi-layered tale of corruption and malfeasance and international complicity that's been going on for two decades."
Etete's lawyer, Antonio Secci, told Reuters his client, whose whereabouts is unknown, almost cried with joy when he heard the verdict. "The trial did not reveal any evidence that the bribery was carried out by my client," he said.
The verdict comes at a time when investors are putting more and more pressure on oil companies both to fight climate change and come up with sustainable business models that take into account the social impact of their activities. Shell and Eni also face scrutiny over the OPL 245 deal in other countries. In March, 2019, Dutch prosecutors said they were preparing criminal charges against Shell while Nigeria has also launched an investigation.
