Italian prosecutors Fabio de Pasquale and Sergio Spadaro, who led the investigation into a major corruption case against oil companies Shell and Eni, have also been found guilty on appeal of failing to provide exculpatory evidence. This is what the Brescia court ruled on Thursday, reports the Italian news agency Ansa. The eight-month suspended prison sentence for each of the two prosecutors remains in place.
De Pasquale is a well-known anti-corruption prosecutor, who previously prosecuted cases against former prime ministers Bettino Craxi and Silvio Berlusconi. In the case against Shell and Eni, which served in Milan between 2018 and 2021, the companies were suspected of having paid more than 1 billion euros in bribes to Nigerian politicians and officials during the purchase of an oil field off the Nigerian coast in 2011.
In this case – named OPL 245 after the oil field – the oil giants were acquitted in 2021. De Pasquale and Spadaro appealed, but were removed from the case because their impartiality was questioned. The criminal case subsequently filed against the prosecutors received public support from Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. In 2024, De Pasquale and Spadaro were sentenced to eight months’ probation, which now remains in effect.
The conviction was strongly criticized by, among others, Drago Kos, the former chairman of the anti-corruption branch of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). “It may be that an error has been made in the procedure against Eni and Shell,” he said last year NRC. “But I have never seen, even in the most corrupt countries, a prosecutor given a prison sentence for a procedural error.”
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