Monthly Archives: June 2025

Formal Review of Italy’s Compliance with OECD Antibribery Convention Requested

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In a June 5 submission to Kathleen Roussel, Chair of the OECD Working Group on Bribery, three NGOs have asked the group to find Italy has failed to prevent political interference in a case where, in the face of overwhelming evidence, Italian oil giant Eni, Shell, and accomplices were acquitted of paying a $1.1 billion bribe to acquire rights to Nigerian oil field license OPL-245 (here).

As a party to the OECD Antibribery Convention, Italy pledged that the investigation and prosecution of foreign bribery cases would not “be influenced by considerations of national economic interest. . . or the identity of the natural or legal persons involved” (article 5). In their submission, the NGOs list 60 different instances where politics, Eni’s nationality, or both compromised the case. The evidence includes:

  • Admissions by Italian officials Eni associates conspired with state officials to “pollute” the OPL 245 investigation
  • The current trial of Eni’s former chief legal counsel for his alleged role in the plot
  • The termination of the OPL 245 prosecutions on overtly political grounds
  • The disciplining and criminal conviction of the two First Instance court prosecutors on charges that an independent judicial expert has described as “questionable conjectures

The complaining NGOs are Corner House Research of the United Kingdom; Hawkmoth, a Netherlands-stichting; and Nigeria’s HEDA Resource Centre.

The Working Group on Bribery is responsible for monitoring compliance with the Convention, and the NGOs’ submission is now circulating among its members. The Convention remains a signal commitment in the global fight against corruption.The Working Group should act promptly and decisively to see Italy observes its commitment to eradicating foreign bribery – no matter the political implications or the bribe payor’s identity.

Causes and Trends of Corruption Risk in Europe

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Alina Mungiu-Pippidi and Iva Parvanova just released a report on corruption in 41 European nations, EU members plus those seeking to join the EU and those that neighbor these countries. A joint publication of Bridge//Gap and LUISS, the highlights include:

  • Non-EU states (Norway, Switzerland, UK) outperform most EU members, while Turkey and Bosnia lag furthest behind.
  • Accession countries and new member states perform well on transparency indicators, sometimes better than more developed countries.
  • Oligarchization is on the rise, especially in Turkey, Cyprus and Hungary.

Packed with useful, objective information on trends in corruption and measures to curb it, the authors find the EU still needs to more to assess the extent and nature of corruption across the 41, recommending it “integrate national-level data across Member and candidate states, enabling cross-border tracking of individuals and companies involved in corruption through unified risk indicators.” They urge implementation of a “pan-European disbarment system …to prevent chronic-offender favorite companies from accessing public contracts.” In addition, they emphasize that corruption risks in public procurement should be managed at the contracting agency level “with officials held accountable for transparency and integrity benchmarks” rather than solely relying on after the fact criminal prosecutions.

The full text of the report is at: https://leap.luiss.it/publication-research/publications/a-mungiu-pippidi-i-parvanova-upholding-intergrity-the-causes-and-trends-of-corruption-risk-in-europe-41/.

Good News about the Fight Against Corruption: International Collaboration in Malawi

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Malawi’s Platform for Investigative Journalism reports that “the man widely accused of orchestrating one of the most brazen corruption schemes in Malawi’s history is now officially in the dock” (here).

As the Continent recounts (here), British-Malawian businessman Zuneth Sattar was indicted June 2 in the United Kingdom on 18 counts of bribery. The charging documents claim that in return for a raft of state contracts he bribed numerous high-ranking Malawian officials. Named in the documents are: a previous Vice President, the late Saulos Chilima; President Lazarus Chakwera’s chief of staff, Prince Kapondamgaga; former Malawi Police Inspector General George Kainja; former Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) Director General and Solicitor General Reyneck Matemba; and Brigadier Dan Kuwali, a law professor and commandant at the Malawi Defence Force College.

The charges show how critical transnational cooperation can be when it comes to nailing “big fish.”  They are the result of a several year collaboration between the UK’s National Crime Agency and Malawi’s Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB).

The case also shows that cross-border cooperation is critical not only when it comes to rooting out the facts.

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