Oil company Shell is also not being prosecuted in the Netherlands in a major corruption case surrounding the purchase of an offshore oil field in Nigeria. $1.1 billion (1.08 billion euros) would have been bribed. The Public Prosecution Service (OM) announced on Thursday that it would close the criminal investigation in Italy after the charges were withdrawn earlier this week due to lack of evidence.
The case against Shell and the Italian oil company ENI has been pending before an Italian court since 2016. In March 2021, the Italian prosecutor ruled that there was no evidence of corruption. This has now been confirmed on appeal. Now that the Italians are no longer prosecuting the company, the Dutch public prosecutor said that the case would also be dropped here.
The allegations against Shell and ENI allege that employees of the company paid a total of $1.1 billion in bribes to gain control of OPL 245 offshore oil fields off the coast of Nigeria. In total, thirteen officials of the two oil companies were suspected. ENI’s CEO and senior Shell executives were among others sentenced to a maximum of eight years in prison.
The current Nigerian government cooperated in investigating the corrupt practices of its predecessors. It seems certain that the former executives have distributed money from the proceeds from the sale of the oil field.
The biggest question during the investigation in Italy was whether Shell and ENI employees were aware of this. When the Milan prosecutor concluded in March that there was no evidence for this, the Nigerian government appealed. It has now been definitively established that there is no evidence of any corruption deals or payments.
Shell welcomes decision to end investigation
At the request of the Italian justice, their Dutch colleagues and the FIOD raided Shell’s headquarters in The Hague in March 2016. They also confiscated computers. The telephones of the Shell management were also tapped.
In a response, Shell said it was pleased with the decision of the Italian prosecutor in Milan. According to Shell, the prosecutor admitted that there was no evidence of corruption deals or payments and that this case should be dismissed as “without value”. The group says the defendants (two oil companies) have the right to drop the case after seven years of suffering.
In 2017, four anti-corruption organizations, which asked the Dutch Public Prosecutor’s Office to open an investigation here too, said they were “deeply disappointed” by the rejection of the investigation. After all, Shell no longer has to answer to a Dutch court in Nigeria.
The criminal investigation may be closed, but the battle between the Nigerian government and the two oil companies continues in civil court. A spokesman for the Nigerian government told the news agency: Bloomberg Let it be known that Shell and ENI continue to believe that they pay very little for the oil field. Therefore, the government is demanding an additional payment of $3.5 billion in court.
Source: NU
John Cameron is a journalist at The Nation View specializing in world news and current events, particularly in international politics and diplomacy. With expertise in international relations, he covers a range of topics including conflicts, politics and economic trends.
