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.
CAIN BURDEAU
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
By Hugo Miller , Kelly Gilblom , and Sergio Di Pasquale: 24 May 2018, 08:40 BST Updated on 24 May 2018, 10:23 BST
A corruption trial against oil giants Shell and Eni and Nigeria’s ex-oil minister Dan Etete is getting started in Milan. The case deals with alleged bribes valuing millions, and the Italian trial is not the only one.
Ben Chapman
Shell and Italian oil giant, Eni, are also defendants in the charge of ‘Aggravated international corruption,’ leveled against the oil executives in the trial which began in Milan, Italy on Monday.
By Bayo Akinloye: 12 MAY 2018
“This corrupt deal is spawning legal action all over the world. Global Witness wholeheartedly supports the move to revoke the rights to this oil block. Shell and Eni should not be allowed to profit from their appalling behaviour…”
After years of claiming that its system is bribery and corruption-free, oil giants, Shell, on Wednesday, admitted that one of its most senior executives may have received kickbacks in return for an oil deal. Mr. Peter Robinson, a former Shell employee, and three other former executives are to face criminal charges in Milan, Italy, for another corrupt deal.
Big names in Houston’s energy world, like KBR, Shell and SBM Offshore, were suddenly having to explain how they came to win drilling rights and contracts worth billions of dollars in countries like Nigeria, Angola and Brazil. That money was then to be passed to Malabu Oil and Gas, a company controlled by the former Nigerian oil minister and convicted money launderer Dan Etete. For years, Shell said it was unaware of what happened to the money, but emails obtained by Global Witness indicated that the company knew the money was going to Malabu.
The Dutch Public Prosecution Service is also investigating whether Shell and four (former) directors, including the current chairman of the board, Ben van Beurden, will be prosecuted for this corruption case. According to Professor of Business Ethics Wim Dubbink, the argument that corruption is inevitable in some countries is “morally and legally an invalid argument”.
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