* Milan court acquits all parties in OPL 245 bribery trial
* Nigerian government says it was surprised by ruling
* TIMELINE-Nigeria's OPL 245 bribery scandal
(Adds prosecutors declined to comment)
By Emilio Parodi and Stephen Jewkes
MILAN, March 17 (Reuters) - A Milan court acquitted energy
company Eni, its chief executive and Royal Dutch Shell
on Wednesday in the oil industry's biggest corruption
case revolving around the $1.3 billion acquisition of a Nigerian
oilfield a decade ago.
The sentence, read out in court by judge Marco Tremolada,
came more than three years after the trial first began and after
74 hearings. Tremolada said the companies and defendants had
been acquitted as there was no case to answer.
The Nigerian government said it was surprised and
disappointed by the verdict and would consider whether to appeal
once its lawyers had read the written judgment.
Rulings in Italy can be appealed and only become enforceable
once they are final. Tremolada said the judges would use all the
90 days permitted by law to compile their written judgement.
The long-running case revolved around a deal in which Eni
and Shell acquired the OPL 245 offshore oilfield in Nigeria.
Under a 2011 agreement, Malabu Oil and Gas, owned by former
Nigerian oil minister Dan Etete, handed OPL 245 back to Nigeria
while in parallel Shell and Eni paid Nigeria $1.3 billion to
settle a long-standing dispute over the oilfield's ownership.
Prosecutors alleged that just under $1.1 billion of that
amount was siphoned off to politicians and middlemen, including
Etete, a convicted money launderer who acquired the field in
1998 when he was oil minister under military ruler Sani Abacha.
Prosecutors had called for Eni and Shell to be fined, for a
number of past and present managers from both firms, including
Eni Chief Executive Claudio Descalzi, to be jailed and for $1.1
billion to be confiscated from the defendants.
The prosecutors declined to comment on the verdict.
The defendants had all denied any wrongdoing.
'CRIED WITH JOY'
"This is a huge blow for natural resource governance and
transparency in Nigeria," said Matthew Page, associate fellow at
the Chatham House Africa programme. "The OPL 245 deal has been a
multi-layered tale of corruption and malfeasance and
international complicity that's been going on for two decades."
Etete's lawyer, Antonio Secci, told Reuters his client,
whose whereabouts is unknown, almost cried with joy when he
heard the verdict.
"The trial did not reveal any evidence that the bribery was
carried out by my client," he said.
The verdict comes at a time when investors are putting more
and more pressure on oil companies both to fight climate change
and come up with sustainable business models that take into
account the social impact of their activities.
Shell and Eni also face scrutiny over the OPL 245 deal in
other countries. In March, 2019, Dutch prosecutors said they
were preparing criminal charges against Shell while Nigeria has
also launched an investigation.
Shell Chief Executive Ben van Beurden said it had always
maintained the 2011 purchase of OPL 245 was legal and designed
to resolve a decade-long dispute over its ownership.
"At the same time, this has been a difficult learning
experience for us," he said in a statement. "Shell is a company
that operates with integrity and we work hard every day to
ensure our actions not only follow the letter and spirit of the
law, but also live up to society's wider expectations of us."
Eni welcomed the ruling and said the acquittal showed the
company and Descalzi had behaved lawfully and properly.
"We have finally reached a judgment that restores Descalzi's
professional reputation and Eni's role as a leading energy
company and the pride of our country," said Paola Severino,
Descalzi's lawyer and a former justice minister.
'DANGEROUS PRECEDENT'
The defendants said the purchase price for OPL 245 was paid
into a Nigerian government account and subsequent transfers were
beyond their control.
Nigeria filed a case at London's High Court in 2017 against
U.S. bank JP Morgan alleging negligence for its role in
transferring $875 million of the OPL 245 settlement to Etete's
Malabu. The case goes to trial later this year.
JP Morgan has said it considers the allegations
"unsubstantiated and without merit".
Tom Mayne, research fellow at the University of Exeter,
said Wednesday's ruling set a dangerous precedent.
"It allows companies to deal with corrupt actors such as
Etete by simply structuring the arrangement so that these actors
don't receive the money directly," he said.
In a 2018, two middlemen in the OPL 245 deal, Nigerian Emeka
Obi and Italian Gianluca Di Nardo, were jailed for corruption
for four years by an Italian court. The judge said Eni and Shell
were fully aware the deal would result in corrupt payments to
Nigerial policicans and officials. https://reut.rs/3cJA2wc
The exploration licence for the field, some 150 km (95
miles) off the Niger Delta, has not been revoked but it has not
yet been converted into a mining licence and no oil has been
produced.
Eni has requested international arbitration against Nigeria
for its failure thus far to allow it to exploit OPL 245.
Senior campaigner at Global Witness, Barnaby Pace, urged the
prosecution to appeal Wednesday's verdict.
"Two middlemen have already been found guilty for their role
in this deal in a separate trial. A criminal trial of Shell and
Eni's Nigerian subsidiaries is ongoing in Nigeria while they
also face an investigation in The Netherlands," he said.
"Today's verdict does not mark the final word in this
scandal for Shell and Eni."
(Reporting by Emilio Parodi, Alfredo Faieta and Stephen Jewkes
in Milan, Libby George in Lagos, Shadia Nasralla and Ron Bousso
in London; Editing by David Clarke)
