The battle for the control of one of Nigeria’s prime oil blocks between local and international players brought down the illustrious careers of two Italian prosecutors, who were accused of complicity in the investigation of ENI, Shell executives allegedly involved in $1 billion bribery scandal.
By Sam Fry and Malavika Devaya
Stone-faced Milanese prosecutor Fabio De Pasquale built his reputation bagging crooked politicians. His most high-profile quarry: scandal-tainted Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, who was banned from Italian politics in 2013 when DePasquale became the first prosecutor to make criminal charges stick to the notorious “Teflon” leader.
The shaven-headed De Pasquale, who intermittently sports a handlebar moustache, went on to bring some of Italy’s biggest foreign bribery prosecutions, pursuing energy companies based at home and abroad as well as the Anglo-Italian arms company AgustaWestland. “For many years he was regarded as a prosecutor who could walk on water,” said one Milanese defence lawyer of De
Pasquale. But the highest stakes trial he’s ever faced was his own. In October, De Pasquale was convicted of failing to perform his prosecutorial duties during the most ambitious foreign bribery trial in Italian legal history. The prosecutor hauled the oil and gas giants Shell and Eni, their top executives and a cast of alleged middlemen, bent public officials and hangers-on – 15 defendants in total – into the dock over an alleged scheme to secure lucrative prospecting licences for the OPL 245 offshore oilfield by paying over $1 billion in bribes.
But they were all acquitted in 2021, when a Milanese judge ruled that De Pasquale had failed to put together a coherent case against them. (The same year, an appeal court acquitted the only two people convicted in the case: alleged middlemen Emeka Obi and Gianluca Di Nardo.)
In the fallout of the trial, a court in Brescia, northern Italy, handed De Pasquale and his fellow prosecutor, Sergio Spadaro, 8-month prison sentences after finding that they wrongly withheld material that could’ve undermined the reliability of a cooperating defendant, former Eni employee Vincenzo Armanna, in the OPL 245 trial.
Brescia prosecutors alleged that De Pasquale and Spadaro failed to share with the defendants some of Armanna’s WhatsApp messages that appeared to show him paying two other witnesses $50,000 to confirm his claims against his ex employer. Brescia prosecutors also accused De Pasquale and Spadaro of breaching their professional duties by not disclosing a secretly recorded video showing Armanna threatening revenge against executives at Eni, which could have brought into question his reliability as a trial witness.
The convictions, which have been suspended pending appeals, also put the prosecutors on the hook for civil damages. Italy’s former deputy consul to Nigeria, Gianfranco Falcioni, was one of the defendants in the OPL 245 case and has joined the Brescia prosecutors’ case against the pair as a civil victim of their alleged wrongdoing.
De Pasquale and Spadaro’s convictions have been received with mixed reactions: the Italian defence bar thinks they send a message that prosecutors mustn’t be opportunistic and bend the rules to get results in their cases. But others see the pair as the victims of dark forces, a pair of crusading anti-corruption prosecutors who’ve been punished for taking on big business.
The case for the defence
White-collar crime experts on De Pasquale and Spadaro’s side argue that the Brescia court’s intervention encroaches on the principles of prosecutorial autonomy and that the severity of the charges against them is disproportionate to their alleged wrongdoing.
The pair have fought the charges since their indictment in 2023, with their lawyer Massimo Dinoia at Dinoia and Federico in Milan arguing that they reasonably exercised their prosecutorial discretion by deciding not to disclose the WhatsApp messages and video, which they received shortly before the OPL 245 trial began from a fellow prosecutor working on a separate case. Dinoia told GIR that De Pasquale and Spadaro intend to continue fighting and will appeal against their convictions after the court issues its written ruling.
Dinoia said his clients’ convictions set a “perilous precedent that calls into question the fundamental principle that prosecutors should be autonomous in their decision-making and should perform their duties free from external pressure or interference.” Dinoia declined GIR’s request to speak directly with his clients.
Drago Kos, a former chairman of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Working Group on Bribery, criticised the decision to charge De Pasquale and Spadaro. Kos said the OECD working group thought highly of the pair and praised the Milan public prosecutor’s office in 2020 thanks to both prosecutors’ efforts to make foreign bribery a priority for Milan’s specialized anti-economic crime department.
“People do not just switch from [being] good and competent to lousy in one day, so there must be a deeper reason behind the decision to prosecute them,” Kos said. “I’m strongly convinced this trial was not about the severity of the prosecutors’ decision but to teach them a lesson, and to prevent others from going down the same path – not the path of allegedly withholding evidence but of bringing charges against big companies accused of international bribery.”
Kos is not alone in his criticism of the decision to prosecute De Pasquale and Spadaro; 30 lawyers, former enforcement officials and academics signed an open letter in October addressed to the OECD Working Group on Bribery, calling on the organisation to investigate De Pasquale and Spadaro’s conviction and observing that “there have been no credible international corruption cases brought to trial in Italy since the bizarre ending of the OPL 245 case”.
The case for the prosecution
Defence lawyers in Italy were reluctant to discuss the case on the record due to the sensitive nature of the case and their relationships with the Milan prosecutor’s office, but they told GIR in background conversations that they think the convictions of De Pasquale and Spadaro have reinforced the principle that prosecutors must act in the wider interests of justice, rather than the narrow pursuit of success in individual cases.
A Rome-based defence lawyer said he believes De Pasquale and Spadaro’s case has re-established trust between citizens and the Italian judiciary. “It shows that they [prosecutors] are really going after the truth, and are willing to go after their colleagues if they are suspected of wrongdoing,” the source said.
“In a nutshell, I don’t believe at all that it is a threat to the independence of the Italian judiciary but, in fact, I think it shows that the Italian system has the antibodies to detect any wrongdoing within it,” the lawyer added. Just De Pasquale’s relentless pursuit of political figures and some of Italy’s largest businesses, combined with his larger-than-life personality, hasn’t endeared him to everyone in the Italian legal world.
“De Pasquale has the kind of personality that makes it clear he’s a bigger guy than you are – sometimes this doesn’t do him favours,” said a Milanese defence lawyer, who added that they personally quite like the prosecutor despite his flaws. “He always bounces back”
Spadaro now works for the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) but De Pasquale has chosen to remain at the Milan prosecutor’s office and continues to work on cases and prosecute trials pending his appeal. In May, the Superior Council of the Judiciary voted not to extend De Pasquale’s appointment as deputy public prosecutor – a move that stripped him of leadership responsibilities and demoted him to the rank of a line prosecutor – based on findings that he had failed to act with impartiality in the OPL 245 trial. If his conviction becomes final, De Pasquale will face further disciplinary proceedings by the council, which could see his prosecuting powers removed entirely.
A spokesperson for the EPPO said in an emailed statement that it is closely monitoring the case against Spadaro – which concerns his conduct prior to joining the European prosecutor’s office – but will continue to extend him the presumption of innocence until a final decision is reached.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office for Milan didn’t respond to a request for comment. De Pasquale and Spadaro’s convictions have been received with mixed reactions: the Italian defence bar thinks they send a message that prosecutors mustn’t be opportunistic and bend the rules to get results in their cases. But others see the pair as the victims of dark forces, a pair of crusading anti-corruption prosecutors who’ve been punished for taking on big business.
The case for the defence
White-collar crime experts on De Pasquale and Spadaro’s side argue that the Brescia court’s intervention encroaches on the principles of prosecutorial autonomy and that the severity of the charges against them is disproportionate to their alleged wrongdoing.
The pair have fought the charges since their indictment in 2023, with their lawyer Massimo Dinoia at Dinoia and Federico in Milan arguing that they reasonably exercised their prosecutorial discretion by deciding not to disclose the WhatsApp messages and video, which they received shortly before the OPL 245 trial began from a fellow prosecutor working on a separate case. Dinoia told GIR that De Pasquale and Spadaro intend to continue fighting and will appeal against their convictions after the court issues its written ruling.
Dinoia said his clients’ convictions set a “perilous precedent that calls into question the fundamental principle that prosecutors should be autonomous in their decision-making and should perform their duties free from external pressure or interference.”Dinoia declined GIR’s request to speak directly with his clients.
Drago Kos, a former chairman of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Working Group on Bribery, criticised the decision to charge De Pasquale and Spadaro. Kos said the OECD working group thought highly of the pair and praised the Milan public prosecutor’s office in 2020 thanks to both prosecutors’ efforts to make foreign bribery a priority for Milan’s specialized anti-economic crime department.
“People do not just switch from [being] good and competent to lousy in one day, so there must be a deeper reason behind the decision to prosecute them,” Kos said. “I’m strongly convinced this trial was not about the severity of the prosecutors’ decision but to teach them a lesson, and to prevent others from going down the same path – not the path of allegedly withholding evidence but of bringing charges against big companies accused of international bribery.”
Kos is not alone in his criticism of the decision to prosecute De Pasquale and Spadaro; 30 lawyers, former enforcement officials and academics signed an open letter in October addressed to the OECD Working Group on Bribery, calling on the organisation to investigate De Pasquale and Spadaro’s conviction and observing that “there have been no credible international corruption cases brought to trial in Italy since the bizarre ending of the OPL 245 case”.
The case for the prosecution
Defence lawyers in Italy were reluctant to discuss the case on the record due to the sensitive nature of the case and their relationships with the Milan prosecutor’s office, but they told GIR in background conversations that they think the convictions of De Pasquale and Spadaro have reinforced the principle that prosecutors must act in the wider interests of justice, rather than the narrow pursuit of success in individual cases.
A Rome-based defence lawyer said he believes De Pasquale and Spadaro’s case has re-established trust between citizens and the Italian judiciary. “It shows that they [prosecutors] are really going after the truth, and are willing to go after their colleagues if they are suspected of wrongdoing,” the source said.
“In a nutshell, I don’t believe at all that it is a threat to the independence of the Italian judiciary but, in fact, I think it shows that the Italian system has the antibodies to detect any wrongdoing within it,” the lawyer added.
De Pasquale’s relentless pursuit of political figures and some of Italy’s largest businesses, combined with his larger-than-life personality, hasn’t endeared him to everyone in the Italian legal world. “De Pasquale has the kind of personality that makes it clear he’s a bigger guy than you are – sometimes this doesn’t do him favours,” said a Milanese defence lawyer, who added that they personally quite like the prosecutor despite his flaws.
“He always bounces back”
Spadaro now works for the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) but De Pasquale has chosen to remain at the Milan prosecutor’s office and continues to work on cases and prosecute trials pending his appeal. In May, the Superior Council of the Judiciary voted not to extend De Pasquale’s appointment as deputy public prosecutor – a move that stripped him of leadership responsibilities and demoted him to the rank of a line prosecutor – based on findings that he had failed to act with impartiality in the OPL 245 trial. If his conviction becomes final, De Pasquale will face further disciplinary proceedings by the council, which could see his prosecuting powers removed entirely.
A spokesperson for the EPPO said in an emailed statement that it is closely monitoring the case against Spadaro – which concerns his conduct prior to joining the European prosecutor’s office – but will continue to extend him the presumption of innocence until a final decision is reached.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office for Milan didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Former Working Group on Bribery chair Kos hopes the convictions aren’t the end of the road for De Pasquale and Spadaro,
who will be able to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights if they exhaust all their appeal options in the Italian courts.
Another source cautioned against prematurely writing off the veteran anti-corruption prosecutor: “De Pasquale has a fighter’s personality – he always bounces back.”
Culled from Global Investigations Review (GIR)
Dear readers, we really need your support to keep on serving you with authoritative, truthful, and juicy stories everyday. For your support, please reach out to the editor @gavelinternational66@gmail.com