Analysis: Will Nigeria yield in oil deal wrestling bout with Shell and Eni?

By Lionel Faull: 27 October 2020

High profile courtroom dramas involving multiple sides often have the feel of a WWE Smackdown wrestling match: titanic egos clashing with each other, trying to batter their foes into submission. The fighters forge alliances, and the argy-bargy can sometimes spill out of the ring and break out elsewhere in the auditorium.

An epic international corruption trial that is now drawing to a close under the glamourous lights of Milan is a case in point. read more

02 JULY 2020

Sergio Spadaro, the Italian deputy prosecutor, on Thursday told a Milan court prosecuting Shell and Eni over the OPL 245/Malabu affair that all parties involved in the deal were corrupt.

He said President Goodluck Jonathan, who led Nigeria from 2010 to 2015, Dan Etete, who allocated OPL 245 to Malabu Oil and Gas — a company in which he had interest as minister of petroleum — in 1998 and Diezani Alison-Madueke, who was minister of petroleum when the oil block was sold to Shell and Eni by Malabu in 2011, all had long-standing relationships. read more

By Amos ABBA On Jan 29, 2020

AT the ongoing corruption trial of oil conglomerates, Shell & Eni in Milan, Italy the court listened to the testimony of Isaac Eke, a retired Assistant Inspector-General of Police as he spoke about his role in the ongoing probe of the $1.1 billion Malabu oil scandal. 

At the hearing held at the Palace of Justice in Milan, Eke who was invited to the witness stand by defendant Vincenzo Armanna, past Eni manager, who became one of the main accusers of the current Eni Chief Executive Officer, CEO, Claudio Descalzi amongst other managers. read more

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By Vivienne Walt: October 11, 2019

Even for a company the size of JPMorgan Chase, it might to be hard to miss a sum of $1.1 billion zipping across a client’s account. That’s the argument currently winding its way through U.K. courts in London, where the government of Nigeria is suing the biggest U.S. bank, arguing that oil giants Royal Dutch Shell and the Italian company Eni paid that amount to allegedly corrupt Nigerian officials in 2011 for a license to drill in a hugely rich offshore oil block—and that JPMorgan ought to have blocked the deposits. read more

Although Shell and ENI initially claimed they did not know the money would end up with Mr Etete and his cronies, evidence has shown that claim to be false.

Oladeinde Olawoyin: July 18, 2019

A major witness in the long-running Malabu oil scandal on Wednesday told an Italian court that Eni officials knew that the controversial payment made in the deal would go to Malabu oil company, controlled by Nigeria’s former oil minister, Dan Etete.

Vincenzo Armanna, former Eni manager and defendant in the corruption trial, said in his testimony that it was clear to everyone involved in the deal that Mr Etete would get over $1 billion, adding that there was no doubt the money was going to Malabu. read more

April 25, 2019: An analysis by oil consultancy firm, Resources for Development, says oil giants Shell/Eni’s deal for the controversial OPL 245 included “unprecedented terms” which funded an alleged bribery scheme.

The analysis was commissioned by four non-governmental groups — Global Witness, HEDA, Re:Common and The Corner House — based on publicly available documents.

This included Shell and Eni’s valuations of the oil block, according to a statement released by the NGOs on Thursday. read more

According to Barnaby Pace of Global Witness, who was at the Italian court, Mr Roger’s economic analysis found that the market value of OPL 245 was $3.511 billion in 2011…

April 4, 2019: Oladeinde Olawoyin

A consultant who stood as witness before an Italian court in Milan on Thursday faulted the valuation of the controversial Oil Prospecting License 245 by oil giants Eni and Shell.

Stephen Rogers appeared before an Italian court Thursday morning as expert witness for Nigeria and presented testimony on the economic cost of the 2011 deal for OPL 245.

Mr Rogers is a partner at the oil consultancy group Arthur D Little with over 30 years experience at Hess, BP and TXU/EON. read more

The investigation into corruption by Shell in Nigeria has not yet been completed, but according to the current investigation, according to the Public Prosecution Service, there are already prosecutable offences.

Printed below is an English translation of an article published today by the Dutch Financial Times, Financieele Dagblad.

Public Prosecution Service is taking Shell’s attention

Bert van Dijk and Vasco van der Boon

The Dutch State will prosecute Shell in two separate cases. The oil and gas multinational is under fire from the Public Prosecution Service (OM) because of possible bribery in Nigeria in 2011 and because of an explosion in June 2014 at Shell Moerdijk. The Public Prosecution Service has announced this on Friday.

Shell has already been summoned for the explosion in Moerdijk. Shell is also being taken to court for a leak of the toxic substance ethylene oxide.

Corruption in Nigeria

The investigation into corruption by Shell in Nigeria has not yet been completed, but according to the current investigation, according to the Public Prosecution Service, there are already prosecutable offences. read more

Nigerian Emeka Obi and Italian Gianluca Di Nardo sentenced to four years in prison as judge orders seizure of more than $120m: …this judgment will send shivers down the corporate spines of the oil industry — and will surely alarm Shell and Eni employees and shareholders who have been repeatedly told that there was nothing amiss with the OPL 245 deal.

• Ben Chapman
• Friday 21 September 2018

Italian prosecutors allege that hundreds of millions of dollars from the 2011 sale of a field was distributed as bribes ( Reuters )

Two middlemen have each been sentenced to four years in prison for corruption offences in the first ruling of a huge bribery trial involving oil giants Shell and Eni. A judge also ordered the seizure of more than $120m from the pair.

Nigerian Emeka Obi and Italian Gianluca Di Nardo were convicted of international corruption by a Milan court for their role in a $1.1bn deal for rights to one of Nigeria’s most promising oil blocks. read more

Thursday, September 20, 2018   19.36PM / By Global Witness 

Conviction in middlemen’s fast-tracked OPL 245 trial a poor omen for Shell and Eni’s defence just days before major bribery trial hears first prosecution witnesses.

Today two middlemen have been found guilty of corruption offences relating to Shell and Eni’s 2011 deal for one of Nigeria’s most promising oil licenses. The judgement was first reported by Reuters who cited a legal source.

The two middlemen Emeka Obi and Gianluca Di Nardo have been sentenced to four years jail time and confiscations of over €100 million. The pair had opted for a fast tracked trial for their role in the deal. The fast track process in Italian law offers a possible reduction in any sentence. A larger trial including Shell, Eni and 13 other defendants is ongoing. The prosecution will start presenting their evidence next Wednesday. read more

…this judgment will send shivers down the corporate spines of the oil industry – and will surely alarm Shell and Eni employees and shareholders who have been repeatedly told that there was nothing amiss with the OPL 245 deal.”

September 20, 2018: Samuel Ogundipe

A Nigerian man and his accomplice in Italy were on Thursday sentenced to four years each for their roles in the controversial Malabu oil deal, marking the first victory for Italian prosecutors in the complex corruption case.

The deal, struck in 2011 under President Goodluck Jonathan, saw the Nigerian government stand as a negotiator in the controversial sale of OPL 245 oil block in offshore Nigerian waters.

Two international oil and gas giants, Royal Dutch Shell and Italian Agip-Eni, paid out about $1.1 billion to Dan Etete, a former Nigerian petroleum minister who had previously been convicted of money laundering in France. read more

Time running out for prosecutors to obtain potentially crucial documents seized in Geneva apartment raid

Ben Chapman: @b_c_chapman

Giant oil companies, offshore accounts, ex-MI6 agents, champagne lunches, a former Nigerian president and allegations of one of the biggest bribes ever paid – the corruption case against Shell and Italy’s Eni filed by prosecutors in Milan over a shady $1.3bn deal for a vast African oil field has could have been lifted from the pages of an espionage thriller.

The latest developments thicken the plot further with a cache of documents seized in a raid on a Swiss financier’s apartment that could be crucial to the case, leaving prosecutors in a race against time to get them to Milan as trial hearings get underway this week.

The Geneva raid uncovered a briefcase belonging to Emeka Obi, a middleman who received millions of dollars from the deal and is in the dock along with several senior Shell and Eni executives.

Inside the briefcase, Swiss prosecutors found a laptop, two Nigerian passports, five sim cards and a hard drive containing 41,000 documents that prosecutors believe could be crucial to the trial playing out on the other side of the Alps. read more

CAIN BURDEAU: July 19, 2018

CASTELBUONO, Sicily (CN) – Nigeria could learn Friday at a court in Milan whether it can pursue damages against oil giants Shell and Eni in a sprawling international corruption case.

The trial centers on a $1.3 billion bribery deal Royal Dutch Shell Plc. and Italy-based Eni S.p.A. executives allegedly entered into in 2011 with Nigerian officials, including then-President Goodluck Jonathan, to purchase a much-coveted oil field off the coast of Nigeria.

In December 2017, Italian judges in Milan ordered the companies and a number of individuals, including top executives at Shell and Eni, to stand trial. The trial has been slow to unfold and remains in preliminary hearings. read more

June 12, 2018 Margot Gibbs, Lionel Faull and Oladeinde Olawoyin

A leak of private property data in Dubai has shed new light on how the proceeds of a notorious $1.3 billion oil deal involving Shell may have been spent on luxury villas in the secretive Arab Emirate.

PREMIUM TIMES’ UK partner, Finance Uncovered, has discovered the name of former Nigerian oil minister Daniel Etete among thousands of property and residency records compiled by assorted real estate professionals in Dubai. The leak was obtained by the U.S. non-profit C4ADS, passed to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and seen by Finance Uncovered.

Mr Etete was the suspected mastermind behind a 2011 deal known as OPL245 that is alleged to be one of the most corrupt in the history of the oil industry. read more

The general thrust seems to be that a current OPL 245 contract tender has been rigged for corrupt purposes benefitting Shell, ENI and certain Nigerian parties. Shell has past expertise in such matters

By John Donovan

More information has arrived as a follow up to the information we published recently in the article “More OPL 245 corruption, continues into 2018?”

OPL 245 is the notorious Nigerian oil deal involving the fraudster Dan Etete and more recently, his equally charming nephew, Ken Etete.

From what I know thus far, the leaked documents I am receiving now on an almost daily basis are authentic and were not previously known to OPL 245 investigators. I now have multiple insider anonymous contributors whose identity is known only to me. Frankly, I don’t know what it all means, but the information is apparently valuable to OPL 245 investigators who are trying to unravel what is going on. read more

By John Donovan

A high level insider source is alleging current major corruption in the continuing OPL 245 Zabazaba Shell/Eni JV project.

The source has supplied documents/emails from 2014 to 2018 containing references to  various parties, including Shell and Eni, relating to OPL 245. Links to the relevant leaked information/evidence are published below. 

It may assist investigators from anti-corruption organisations (such as Global Witness and Finance Uncovered) more familiar with the overall situation, who are trying to put all of the pieces together in a web of continuing financial machination and complexity.  read more