The "purchase procedure" of the OPL 245 oil field in Nigeria "by Eni" was "studded" by “an impressive sequence of anomalies”. Anomalies known to the top management of the company according to what was written by the investigating judge Giusy Barbara in the reasons for the sentence arrived last September against the two mediators, Obi Emeka and Gianluca Di Nardo, sentenced to 4 years for a suspected bribe to the Nigerian government.
The abbreviated verdict of last September is the first sentence in Milan on the affair of the alleged maxi bribe from 1 billion and 92 million paid, according to the indictment, by Eni and Shell to politicians and bureaucrats in Nigeria and, it is assumed, also to managers of the Italian group for the acquisition of the field.
“All the evidence” reads the document, lead to the conclusion that management “was fully aware of the fact that part of the 1.092 billion dollars paid would be used to remunerate Nigerian public officials, who had played a role in this affair and who, like ravenous 'sharks' circled around their prey”.
Among others, the current CEO of the company, Claudio Descalzi, who was number 2 in Italy at the time, is accused in the hearing. According to the investigating judge, the manager would have been "prone to the demands of Luigi Bisignani, that is, of a private citizen whose name had already emerged in some of the hottest and most well-known investigations in Italian judicial history".
Ready Eni's reply: the company "reaffirms the correctness of its actions in the acquisition of OPL 245 in Nigeria and that it has negotiated and concluded the transaction directly with the Nigerian Government". This is what can be read in a note in which the company specifies that it reserves the right to read and evaluate the reasons for the sentence relating to the conviction of Messrs. Obi and Di Nardo in their integral version. Eni also "confirms its total confidence in the work of the judges of the hearing that is taking place in the seventh section of the same Court". “Eni – continues the note – believes that a complete and exhaustive reconstruction of the facts will be carried out in this session, compared to that available to the abbreviated procedure judge, who could only use the acquisitions of the public prosecution. Eni is certain that this reconstruction will definitively allow to prove the total non-involvement of the company in any corruption hypothesis"
