Snamprogetti Netherlands B.V., FCPA Violations, Texas 2004

WASHINGTON – A decade-long scheme to bribe Nigerian government officials has landed Snamprogetti Netherlands B.V. with a hefty price tag, $240 million in fines for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).

The Dutch corporation, headquartered in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, was a wholly owned subsidiary of Snamprogetti S.p.A., an Italian EPC company headquartered in Milan, Italy. Snamprogetti, along with Kellogg Brown & Root Inc. (KBR), Technip S.A. (Technip), and an engineering and construction company headquartered in Yokohama, Japan, was part of a four-company joint venture that was awarded four EPC contracts by Nigeria LNG Ltd. (NLNG), between 1995 and 2004 to build liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities on Bonny Island.

The government-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) was the largest shareholder of NLNG, owning 49 percent of the company. Snamprogetti authorized the joint venture to hire two agents, Jeffrey Tesler and a Japanese trading company, to pay bribes to a range of Nigerian government officials, including top-level executive branch officials, to assist Snamprogetti and the joint venture in obtaining the EPC contracts.

Under the terms of the deferred prosecution agreement, the department agreed to defer prosecution of Snamprogetti for two years. Snamprogetti, its current parent company, Saipem S.p.A., and its former parent company, ENI S.p.A. (ENI), agreed to ensure that their compliance programs satisfied certain standards and to cooperate with the department in ongoing investigations.

The EPC contracts to build LNG facilities on Bonny Island, Nigeria, were valued at more than $6 billion. The joint venture paid approximately $132 million to a Gibraltar corporation controlled by Tesler and more than $50 million to the Japanese trading company during the course of the bribery scheme.

Snamprogetti, a Dutch corporation, must pay $240 million in fines to resolve charges related to the FCPA for its participation in the bribery scheme. If Snamprogetti and its current and former parent companies abide by the terms of the deferred prosecution agreement, the department will dismiss the criminal information when the term of the agreement expires.

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