The Scandal of Nigerian Oil Block OPL 245 | Global Witness
▻http://www.globalwitness.org/library/scandal-nigerian-oil-block-opl-245
Via J.-C. Servant
How secrecy in the oil & gas sector and the use of anonymous shell companies led to hundreds of millions of dollars being diverted away from Nigeria’s citizens and into the hands of a convicted money-launderer.
The Story
In May 2012, Global Witness pieced together detailed court documents and other evidence that exposed how Nigerian subsidiaries of Royal Dutch Shell and Italian oil giant Eni agreed to pay US$1.092 billion for one of Nigeria’s most lucrative oil blocks, OPL245.
The payment was made by Shell and Eni to the Nigerian government who had a separate agreement to pay the same amount to Malabu Oil and Gas, a company widely believed at the time of the payments to be controlled by convicted money-launderer[i] and former oil minister Chief Dan Etete. In July 2013, a British High Court ruled[ii] that Etete was indeed the owner of Malabu Oil & Gas. As Etete had awarded the oil block to Malabu Oil and Gas whilst oil minister during the regime of the corrupt dictator General Abacha, he had effectively given himself one of the most lucrative oil blocks in Nigeria[iii].