This is the fifth time Nigeria has lost in this lengthy court case.
This is the fifth time Nigeria has lost in this lengthy court case.
Nigeria has lost its case for the fifth time in Italy’s long-running OPL 245 trial.
On Friday, the appeals court in Milan, Italy, rejected the country’s claim for $1. 1 billion in reimbursement from Shell and Eni, the two energy giants that bought Malabu Oil and Gas Ltd’s oil block in 2011.
The Nigerian government had alleged corruption in the deal, leading to a series of prosecutions by criminals in Nigeria and Italy. The Milan Court of Appeal dismissed Nigeria’s civil claims and promised to make its reasons public within 90 days.
“We are pleased that those civil lawsuits have been dismissed. This follows the conclusion of the Milan Criminal Court that Shell or its former workers did not have to answer when they were fully acquitted in 2021, a resolution it upheld in July 2022, for the purposes of the thief’s proceedings,” Shell said in a comment emailed to Reuters news agency.
In the first case, in which the Nigerian government joined as an aggrieved party, the Milan court ruled in March 2021, after 3 years of trial for thieves, that prosecutors had failed to establish evidence of corruption, releasing and acquitting Shell, Eni and all defendants. Prosecutors later appealed, but Celestina Gravina, Italy’s lead prosecutor, said the case “has no basis . . . in fact, it ended earlier” and was removed from the list in July 2022.
Just in case, the High Court of England and Wales ruled in July 2022 that Nigeria had failed to make its case against Mohammed Bello Adoke, the federation’s former attorney general, accused of bribery in the deal.
Nigeria had sued JP Morgan Bank for $1. 7 billion for allegedly violating its “due diligence” when it transferred invoices from Shell and ENI to Malabu Oil and Gas Ltd between 2011 and 2013.
On Tuesday, Aliyu Abubakar, the real estate developer who was also tried in Italy in the OPL 245 case, told a Federal High Court in Abuja that he was forced through the EFCC to implicate former President Goodluck Jonathan and Adoke in money laundering in the same said that in December 2019, he was ready for him to sign, otherwise he would be arrested through the EFCC under the orders of Ibrahim Magu, then chairman of the commission.
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