(Adds detail, background)
MILAN, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Nigeria asked a Milan court on
Wednesday to order Eni and Royal Dutch Shell
to pay $1.092 billion as an immediate advance payment for
damages in one of the oil industry's biggest-ever corruption
scandals.
At a hearing into alleged corruption linked to Eni and
Shell's 2011 acquisition of the OPL 245 offshore field, Lucio
Lucia, lawyer for the Nigerian government, called for the
advance payment ahead of a broader damages package to be set by
the court at a later date.
The long-running case revolves around the purchase of the
OPL 245 offshore field, some 150 km off the Niger Delta, for
about $1.3 billion from Malabu, a company owned by former
Nigerian oil minister Dan Etete.
Prosecutors allege that about $1.1 billion of that money was
siphoned off to politicians and middlemen, half of it to Etete
himself.
Shell says the 2011 agreement was a settlement of
long-standing litigation, following the previous allocation of
the block by the Nigerian government to Shell and Malabu.
In July, prosecutors in the case asked for Eni and Shell to
be fined and some of their present and former executives,
including Eni CEO Claudio Descalzi, to be jailed.
They also requested the confiscation of a total of $1.092
billion from all the defendants in the case, the equivalent of
the bribes alleged to have been paid.
On Wednesday, Lucia joined up to the request for seizure of
that amount.
Etete, Eni, Shell and the managers accused in the Milan
court case, including Descalzi, have all denied any wrongdoing.
(Reporting by Emilio Parodi; writing by Stephen Jewkes; editing
by Jason Neely)
