All acquitted. This is how the Court of Milan decided in the trial that accused Eni and Shell of corruption in Nigeria: there were 15 defendants (including the companies, Eni and Shell), including the current CEO of the Six-legged dog Claudio Descalzi and former president Paolo Scaroni (now president of Milan), as well as various managers and the authorities of the African country. The prosecutor's charge, which had asked for 8 years in prison for Descalzi and 10 years for the former Nigerian oil minister, Dan Etete, in addition to the confiscation of 1 billion 92 million and 400 thousand dollars from both Eni and Shell , was of international corruption with at the center the acquisition of the exploration rights of the Opl245 oil block in Nigeria, for which the two companies allegedly paid a maxi bribe.
The requests for punishment have always been considered by Eni "without any foundation", and "in the absence of any evidence or concrete reference to the contents of the preliminary hearing". "Finally Claudio Descalzi has been restored to his professional reputation and to Eni its role as a large company," commented Paola Severino, defense attorney of the Italian oil company's CEO. “Eni and Shell – added the lawyer Enrico De Castiglione – they did not provide any funds or bribes, but they paid to get a license. There was no discussion with public officials, just a technical-economic discussion on the price of the property. Deep down, the prosecutor and the civil party are also well aware of the total inconsistency of the hypothesis that 'everyone knew' about the money”.
For Shell, the CEO of the Anglo-Dutch multinational group directly comments on the outcome of the sentence, which was welcomed. “We have always maintained that the 2011 agreement was legitimate – is the declaration of Ben van Beurden, Chief Executive Officer of Royal Dutch Shell – aimed at resolving a decade-old legal dispute and jump-starting the development of block OPL 245. At the same time, it was a difficult experience for us. Shell is a company that operates with integrity and we work hard every day to ensure that our actions not only follow the letter and spirit of the law, but also meet society's broader expectations of us." The basic thesis, which has always been supported by Shell, is that the 2011 Settlement Agreement had the objective of putting an end to a long dispute arising from the fact that the rights to the Opl 245 block had been assigned by the Nigerian government to two different parties : Shell and Malabu. Hence the dispute and the negotiation that resulted in the agreement and in the payment to the Nigerian government aimed at developing the block, however, remained undeveloped.
Returning to the Milanese trial, the prosecution's argument was therefore canceled by the judges, who acquitted all the defendants with full formula "because the fact does not exist". The reasons will be filed in 90 days. The trial had started in 2018. Here is the list of acquitted defendants: Claudio Descalzi, Paolo Scaroni, the former operational manager of the San Donato group in sub-Saharan Africa Roberto Casula, the former manager of the Italian company in Nigeria Vincenzo Armanna, the former manager of Nae, Eni's subsidiary in Nigeria, Ciro Antonio Pagano, the former Nigerian oil minister Dan Etete. And then again Luigi Bisignani, the Russian Ednan Agaev and Gianfranco Falcioni, the latter an entrepreneur and former vice-consul in Nigeria, the former president of the Shell Foundation Malcom Brinded and the former executives of the Dutch company Peter Robinson, Guy Jonathan Colgate and John Coplestone.
