Investigators visit Shell Hq on Nigeria Oil Deal

Royal Dutch Shell said on Wednesday Dutch investigators recently visited its headquarters in the Hague in the Netherlands in relation to an investigation into a Nigerian offshore oil field, OPL 245.

“Representatives of the Dutch Financial Intelligence and Investigation Service and the Dutch Public Prosecutor recently visited Shell at its headquarters, ” a spokesman said.

“The visit was related to OPL 245, an offshore block in Nigeria that was the subject of a series of long-standing disputes with the Federal Government of Nigeria.”

Shell is cooperating with the authorities and is looking into the allegations, the spokesman said.

The Federal Government of Nigerian had threatened to retrieve one of Africa’s richest oil blocs from oil giants, Shell and Eni.

Not only will the two oil giants lose OPL 245, should President Muhammadu Buhari approve the recommendations, they would also be fined billions of dollars for illegal activities, including payments to fraudulent public officials and private citizens in order to secure the bloc.

The retrieval of the controversial oil bloc, estimated to contain about 9 billion barrels of crude, as well as placing heavy fines on the oil giants was contained in a far-reaching recommendation by the office of the Director of Public Prosecution, DPP, Mohammed Diri.

The recommendation was at the instance of the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, who was set to advise the government on how to proceed on the controversial deal being investigated by authorities in four different countries.

In arriving at its recommendations, the DPP committee, which included lawyers from his office, called for the cancellation of the ‘settlement agreement’ that ceded the oil bloc to Shell and Eni.

The ‘settlement agreement’ in question was reached sometime in 2011 and made up of three different parts. ‘Resolution agreement’ signed by the parties involved in the OPL 245 saga.

The first, titled “BLOCK 245 MALABU RESOLUTION AGREEMENT” was signed between representatives of the federal government and those of Malabu, which was represented during the discussions by a former petroleum minister, Dan Etete.

The second agreement, titled “BLOCK 245 RESOLUTION AGREEMENT” was between the Nigerian government and officials of Shell and Eni/AGIP; and the third agreement, titled “BLOCK 245 SNUD RESOLUTION AGREEMENT”, was signed by officials of the Nigerian government and Shell.

The immediate past attorney general of the federation, Mohammed Adoke, and immediate past petroleum minister, Diezani Alison-Madueke signed all the agreements on behalf of the Federal government.

They are among officials being investigated by Nigeria’s foremost anti-graft agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, for their roles in the scam and some others.

The agreements saw the transfer of OPL 245, first from the Malabu to the Nigerian government and then from the government to Shell and Eni. The agreements also effectively cancelled all previous law suits and judgments related to the case.

It was based on these agreements that Shell and Eni paid a total of $1.3 billion into Nigerian government accounts, the money eventually ended up in phoney account according to an online publication.

A new committee constituted by the Attorney General Malami recommended that the agreement be cancelled, describing it as “null and void”, and saying it “should not be given any legal effect by the government.

The committee averred that doing so would amount to the Federal Government of Nigeria) condoning and perpetuating illegality.”

One of the reasons the panel consider the agreement illegal is that the ex-convict, Mr. Etete, had no legal authority to negotiate the agreement on behalf of Malabu as he was not a shareholder of the company nor had the permission of the shareholders to do so.

Also, the oil bloc was awarded to Malabu in furtherance of Nigeria’s policy to encourage local companies and part of the conditions for the award was that “foreign participation interest in the blocks (OPL 245 and 214) shall not exceed 40%, i.e. 60/40 indigenous to foreign;” a fact Shell was aware of but chose to ignore.

The committee also sought the cancellation of the agreement based on a resolution by the last House of Representatives, which called for the cancellation and demanded that Shell be“censured or reprimanded… for its lack of transparency and full disclosure in its bid to acquire OPL 245.”

Also, although Shell and Eni claimed they only struck an agreement with the federal government and that they did not know, before the agreement, that the money they paid was going to Malabu, evidence by investigators in Italy and the Nigerian anti-graft agency, EFCC, showed that the oil firms knew the payment was eventually going to Malabu accounts controlled by Etete, a man once convicted for money laundering in France.

Apart from calling for the cancellation of the agreement, the DPP panel also recommended the full recovery of the money paid by Shell and Eni, describing it as “proceed of crime.”

An Online publication had reported how the Federal Government paid over $800 million of the money into accounts controlled by Etete and how Justice Edis of the Southwark Crown Court in England refused to release $85 million of the remaining sum to Etete in December.