Italian Appeal Court upholds the prosecutors’ conviction in Nigeria’s OPL 245 case due to withheld evidence

Italian Appeal Court upholds the jail sentences of the prosecutors who concealed important evidence during the OPL 245 prosecution of Eni and Shell.

For failing to submit information that would have bolstered the position of oil firm Eni in a global corruption investigation, two Milan prosecutors, Fabio De Pasquale and Sergio Spadaro, were sentenced to eight months in prison by an Italian Appeal Court.

Judges in the northern city of Brescia maintained the decision from last year, according to Reuters, which determined that prosecutors De Pasquale and Spadaro had not fulfilled their legal duty to submit documents that could have aided the defense.

“There was no refusal, there was no omission,” Spadaro told the court in a lengthy statement before the verdict, adding that the prosecution had behaved “according to conscience and law.”

They would appeal to Italy’s highest court, the Court of Cassation, according to Massimo Dinoia, the attorney for their two prosecutors.

According to the Milan court that cleared the defendants in the Eni and Shell trial, the prosecution neglected to include a video taken by an ex-external attorney for Eni in the trial’s supporting documentation, despite the court’s ruling that the film was pertinent to the case.

De Pasquale and Spadaro were given an eight-month prison sentence in October of last year for concealing crucial evidence during Shell and Eni’s trial on the OPL 245 scandal.

Another chapter in the OPL 245 story, the case ended at the Court of Milan when Italian prosecutors were unable to produce proof of fraud in the 2011 sale of the oil block to Shell and Eni by Nigerian business Malabu Oil and Gas Limited.