Eni SpA and Royal Dutch Shell Plc and senior executives will face trial over a $1.1 billion bribery scandal in Nigeria, an Italian judge ruled on Wednesday.
Eni’s board released a statement expressing “full confidence in the correctness and integrity of both the company’s and chief executive’s actions,” and said it’s confident of Eni’s “non-involvement in the alleged illegal conducts.”
Shell said in a statement that it’s “disappointed” by the judge’s decision. “We believe the trial judges will conclude that there is no case against Shell or its former employees,” said Anna Haslam, a London-based spokeswoman. The Anglo-Dutch company, whose former upstream director Malcolm Brinded is among those facing trial, acknowledged in April that it was aware of the destination of part of the payments, but denied wrongdoing.
Marco Calleri, a lawyer for Brinded, declined to comment on Wednesday.
A final court ruling may take years, potentially bringing steep legal costs for the two companies. The average length of a civil trial in Italy was 460 days in 2016, according to the Ministry of Justice.
Eni and Shell are also facing criminal charges in Nigeria over the same deal. In Europe, Dutch investigators visited Shell’s offices in The Hague in 2016 as part of a probe into the same matter.
