Oil companies ENI and Shell, as well as their executives, were yesterday definitively acquitted in the corruption case running in court in Milan, Italy, after the local prosecutor's office decided to drop the appeal.

The Milan prosecutor's office decided to drop the appeal, conceding that "there was no relevant evidence in this trial."

Thus, the Deputy Attorney General, Celestina Gravina, withdrew the appeal filed in July last year by the Deputy Attorney General, Fabio De Pasquale, during a hearing at the Milan Court of Appeal.

ENI and Shell had already been cleared in March last year by the Milan court, a decision heavily criticized by non-governmental organizations that had for years denounced corruption in the operation of the oil companies in Nigeria, the largest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa.

In this trial, the Italian prosecution alleged that the two groups paid $1092 billion in bribes, out of a total of $1.3 billion disbursed in 2011, to acquire an exploration license for the OPL-245 offshore oil block in Nigeria.

The Milan prosecutor's office had requested in July 2020, eight-year prison sentences for corruption against Eni CEO Claudio Descalzi and his predecessor, Paolo Scaroni, the group's leader at the time of the alleged offenses.

A sentence of seven years and four months in prison had been sought for Malcolm Brinded, former Executive Director of Shell's Exploration and Production Division, and ten years for former Nigerian Oil Minister Dan Etete.