By Enyichukwu Enemanna
An Appeal Court in Milan on Friday dismissed the sum of $1.1bn being requested as compensation request by the Government of Nigeria against Italian energy group Eni, and British oil and gas company, Shell in civil proceedings in connection with a $1.3bn oilfield deal.
The main case borders on deal in which Eni and Shell acquired the OPL 245 offshore oilfield in 2011 for $1.3bn, to settle a longstanding dispute over ownership.
“We are pleased that these civil proceedings have been dismissed,” Shell said in an emailed comment to the Reuters news agency.
“This follows the Milan criminal tribunal’s finding that there was no case to answer for Shell or its former employees when they were fully acquitted in 2021, a decision that was upheld in July 2022, when criminal proceedings ended,” it added.
Eni was yet to respond on the judgement as at the moment of this report.
In July, prosecutors had dropped related criminal proceedings, clearing Eni and Shell, as well as top managers, including Eni Chief Executive Claudio Descalzi, in one of the global oil industry’s biggest alleged corruption cases.
Prosecutors alleged that about $1.1bn of the total amount was siphoned off to politicians and middlemen in Nigeria, then Africa’s largest oil producer.
The oil bloc was initially owned by a local company where a former Petroleum Minister Dan Etete was a major stakeholder.
A lawyer representing Nigeria in the proceedings added that the country was still deciding whether to appeal the decision at Italy’s top administrative court.
