Why is Shell always implicated in the dirtiest Corruption cases in Nigeria? And they always get away with it
http://allafrica.com/stories/201205220334.html


Shell, ENI, FG in U.S.$1.9 Billion Round-Tripping Transaction
BY BLESSING ANARO, 22 MAY 2012 In a clandestine shuffle, Shell, ENI subsidiaries in Nigeria and the federal government may have quietly been engaged in a round-tripping payment of $1.092 billion over the long-disputed oil block OPL 245, court documents from a March 2012 New York arbitration case have revealed. Round-tripping, also known as round-trip transactions or "Lazy Susans", is defined by The Wall Street Journal, as a form of barter that involves a company selling "an unused asset to another company while at the same time agreeing to buy back the same or similar assets at about the same price." Round trips are characteristic of the New Economy companies. They played a crucial part in temporarily inflating the market capitalisation of energy traders such as Enron, CMS Energy, Reliant Energy, and Dynegy. In international scenarios, round tripping is used for tax evasion and money laundering as well. According to a report by Global Witness entitled "Shell's obscure payments kill its case for weak US and EU transparency laws" Nigerian subsidiaries of both Shell and ENI agreed to pay $1.092 billion to the Nigerian government for oil block OPL 245 in the country. But at the same time, the same amount was agreed to be paid by the Nigerian government to Malabu Oil and Gas, a company widely reported to be controlled by an Abacha-era minister and convicted money-launderer, Mr. Dan Etete. Global Witness is an international NGO established in 1993 that works to break the links between natural resource exploitation, conflict, poverty, corruption, and human rights abuses worldwide. The documents from the court case showed that Shell and ENI subsidiaries agreed to pay $1,092,040,000 to the federal government to settle any existing claims surrounding the ownership of the long-disputed block OPL 245, although the documents suggest the ENI subsidiary, Nigeria Agip Exploration Ltd, may have made the payments to the government on behalf of both companies as the "operator" of the block. The report noted that a second agreement, made in the same month revealed that the gover