Africa Press-Nigeria:
Nigeria on Wednesday asked a court in Milan, Italy, to order Eni and Royal Dutch Shell to pay $1.092bn as an immediate advance payment for damages in one of the oil industry’s biggest-ever corruption scandals.
Reuters reported that at a hearing into alleged corruption around the 2011 acquisition by Eni and Shell 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.
SaharaReporters gathered that this was the first time a foreign government was asking for damages in an Italian court.
The $1.092bn is said to be the equivalent of bribes alleged to have been paid.
The Malabu scandal involves the transfer of about $1.1bn by oil multinationals, Shell and ENI, through the Nigerian Government to accounts controlled by a former Minister of Petroleum Resources, Dan Etete.
From accounts controlled by Etete, about half the money ($520m) went to the accounts of companies jointly controlled by Abubakar Aliyu popularly known in Nigeria as the owner of AA oil, and Etete.
