Environmental and social justice groups on Wednesday condemned Italy’s anti-corruption laws as “unfit for purpose”.
The condemnation followed the acquittal of oil multinationals, Shell and Eni, on international corruption charges in Milan.
PREMIUM TIMES reported how officials of the oil companies were acquitted by the court Wednesday.
Thirteen other defendants in the case were also found not guilty.
But activists and anti-corruption advocacy groups monitoring the case expressed their disappointment in the verdict in a statement Wednesday night.
“The judgment brings shame on Italy,” says Lanre Suraju of HEDA, a Nigerian anti-corruption group that was among the first to expose the corruption allegations surrounding the OPL 245 deal.
“One court has found the intermediaries of the OPL 245 deal guilty of international corruption, yet this court has found Shell and Eni not guilty. We await the full ruling of the Milan court to explain this bizarre outcome.”
The two oil companies had been on trial in Milan since 2018, relating to their 2011 purchase of an offshore Nigerian oilfield, “OPL 245”.
Shell and Eni agreed to pay $1.3 billion for the license to explore the field. $1.1bn of the company’s payment was to be paid to Malabu Oil and Gas, a company controlled by Nigeria’s former Oil Minister, Dan Etete.
Mr Etete had awarded his own company the license while in government. The Milan Prosecutor had alleged that the $1.1 billion paid by Shell and Eni was used to pay bribes to Nigerian politicians and kickbacks to managers at Eni.
“This is a dismal judgment that reflects the dismal state of anti-corruption legislation in Italy,” said Antonio Tricarico of Re:Common, one of the groups whose complaint led to the Milan Prosecutor’s investigation.
“If allowed to stand, it creates a terrible precedent for the global fight against corruption and the ability to hold multinationals to account.”
Barnaby Pace, Senior…
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