On 17 March 2021, after almost three years of legal proceedings, the Court of Milan acquitted Eni, its chief executive Claudio Descalzi and the management team involved in the Nigeria-OPL 245 affair on every count on the grounds that the case was unfounded.
Appeal proceedings
On 29 July, 2021, Fabio De Pasquale, Deputy Public Prosecutor for Milan, lodged an appeal against the acquittal verdict handed down by the Milan Court on 17 March, 2021. An appeal was also lodged by the plaintiff in the case, the Federal Government of Nigeria, represented by Counsel Lucio Lucia.
Eni reiterates its total non-involvement in the disputed matters and is confident that the appeal court will quickly confirm the findings of the earlier court case.
As previously reported, the matters in dispute were fully investigated as part of the proceedings relating to the role of intermediaries.
This being the case, on 2 November, 2021, the Public Prosecutor’s Office rejected the application for an appeal to the Court of Cassation made by Nigeria against the acquittal of Emeka Obi and Gianluca Di Nardo, thus definitively confirming that there was no case to answer in respect of the criminal acts that Eni and its managers were alleged to have committed. The Court in fact stated that “there is no doubt that the Eni managers, and the intermediaries, were not involved in behaviour typical of the crime of corruption”.
We are making available to all interested parties the principal legal documents relating to the trial, as we have already done with all the documentation lodged in relation to the OPL 245 affair.
