By Merijn Rengers and Carola Houtekamer
In one of the largest corruption investigations in recent history, the tables have turned since Tuesday. Not the oil companies Shell and Eni, suspected of paying more than 1 billion euros in bribes in Nigeria, have been convicted, but the two public prosecutors who led the investigation.
On Tuesday, the court in Brescia sentenced Italian magistrates Fabio De Pasquale and Sergio Spadaro to eight months suspended prison sentences. They allegedly failed to submit a document exonerating the oil companies to the court in Milan, where they had been investigating possible bribery by Shell and Eni for years.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) explicitly praised the two magistrates two years ago for the quality of their work, which they carried out under great pressure . Drago Kos, former chairman of the OECD’s anti-corruption branch, calls the conviction of the officers to NRC “devastating” for the fight against international corruption. “It may be that a mistake was made in the procedure against Eni and Shell. But I have never, not even in the most corrupt countries, seen a prosecutor receive a prison sentence for a procedural error.
The signal that this sends is: prosecutor, don’t start this, don’t touch these companies and people.”
Acquitted
The case revolves around the huge OPL 245 oil field off the Nigerian coast. Shell and Eni bought the exploitation rights in 2011 for over 1.3 billion dollars (now 1.2 billion euros). The vast majority of the purchase price ended up in the pockets of politicians and officials who made decisions about the oil field via the Nigerian government. The oil companies were eventually acquitted in 2021, because according to the Italian judges they were not responsible for what the Nigerian government did with the money.
Shortly after the two Italian officers appealed against the acquittal, they were removed from the case because they were said to be impartial. Their successor then abandoned the appeal. De Pasquale and Spadaro were then prosecuted themselves. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who has good ties to Eni, intervened in the case in May of this year when she expressed her surprise at the lack of disciplinary measures against De Pasquale.
In an open letter, twenty anti-corruption experts from various countries, including public prosecutors, lawyers, professors and former national anti-corruption officer Daniëlle Goudriaan, are now asking the OECD to conduct a thorough investigation into the “very worrying elements” in the “aggressive attack” on the two officers. The prison sentence may be a prelude to the destruction of the Milanese department for international anti-corruption, they write.
“This appears to be an attempt to prevent the Italian legal system from tackling major international corruption cases.
For the growing number of authoritarian regimes coming to power within the OECD, this is a welcome development.” At the same time as the Italian investigation, a criminal case against Shell was underway in the Netherlands, for which the FIOD investigative service raided the head office in The Hague in 2016. After Italian judges fully acquitted the oil companies in 2021, the case against Shell was also dropped.
Former star prosecutor De Pasquale has been fighting oil company Eni for decades. Early in his career, he investigated former Prime Minister Bettino Craxi, who was embroiled in a corruption scandal with Eni. De Pasquale led major criminal cases against the mafia and got Italian politicians like former Prime Minister Berlusconi convicted of tax fraud. Now he has been demoted. He is back to handling small cases at the Milan prosecutor’s office, instead of complex, international cases.
Massimo Dinoia, the lawyer for the two officers, is astonished by the verdict. “I would not have thought this possible,” he emails from Milan. “This sets a dangerous precedent. Prosecutors must be able to take decisions autonomously and free from pressure and interference from outside.
(@ https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2024/10/10/de-officieren-van-justitie-die-in-italie-corruptieonderzoek-naar-shell-en-eni-deden-zijn-nu-zelf-veroordeeld-a4868897)
