Quantcast
Channel: The Punch - Nigeria's Most Widely Read Newspaper »» Business
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 13057

OPL 245 deal: UK police probe Shell, Eni

$
0
0

British police are investigating a money-laundering allegation related to a big oil field bought by Shell and Eni from Nigeria for $1.3bn, after most of the cash they paid ended up in a company linked to a former Minister of Petroleum Resources.

The probe, according to a Reuters report, concerns the offshore Oil Prospecting Licence 245, which industry sources said contained up to 9.23 billion barrels of crude – more than enough to keep China running for two and a half years – the ownership of which had been in dispute for more than a decade.

“The proceeds of crime unit is investigating a money-laundering allegation in the United Kingdom in connection with OPL 245. The investigation is at an early stage,” a United Kingdom police spokesman said.

Transparency campaigners, who asked the UK to look into the matter, asserted that Shell and Eni used the Nigerian government as a go-between to obscure the fact that they were dealing with the former minister, Dan Etete, who also has a 2007 money-laundering conviction in France related to bribes he was alleged to have taken when in government.

In his capacity as petroleum minister, Etete awarded OPL 245 in 1998 for a payment of just $2m to Malabu Oil and Gas, a company in which he played a prominent role.

The critics claim that Shell and Eni, which haven’t been accused of any legal wrongdoing, wanted to distance themselves from Etete given his reputation and his involvement in the original award of the oil block to Malabu.

A Shell spokesman told Reuters it had purchased the block from the government, making no payment to Malabu, and that it acted transparently and in accordance with the Nigerian law.

Eni declined to comment to Reuters, but it told shareholders in May that the transaction was with the government, not Malabu.

Reuters was not able to locate Etete for comment. His lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

While Shell and Eni said they bought the block from the Federal Government, for which they paid it $1.3bn in 2011, Nigeria said it was helping to resolve an ownership dispute over the block between Shell and Malabu, and immediately transferred $1.09bn from the sale to Malabu. The government retained the remainder.

Etete had awarded the block to Malabu during the rule of military dictator, Gen. Sani Abacha, whose son, Mohammed, and other close allies, were shareholders in the company. The deal was later annulled after the death of Abacha by a new government that judged the award improper.

In a UK court case brought by Emeka Obi against Malabu for unpaid fees relating to his help in brokering the Shell/Eni deal, the judge in that case, Justice Elizabeth Gloster, concluded in her ruling last week, “From its incorporation and at all material times … Etete had a substantial beneficial interest in Malabu.”

Etete said he was only a consultant to the company, but he represented it in the court case and in all negotiations with the oil majors, and he told the court he was the sole signatory to its accounts.

Documents relating to Obi’s London case show that both Shell and Eni met several times with Etete to negotiate the deal. An email from a Shell employee to another middleman recounted how he met Etete for face-to-face negotiations over “lots of iced champagne”.

Global Witness campaigner Tom Mayne said, “It’s obvious from the meetings Shell and Eni both had with Dan Etete that they knew he was the person to speak to and then agreed that the deal be structured in such a way that it went through the government.”


Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 13057

Trending Articles