Nigeria Sues Shell Companies For $407m For Oil Export Fraud

The federal government of Nigeria has sued Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited and its allied Shell Western Supply & Trading Limited for nearly $407 million as part of its battle to recover all monies siphoned through undeclared/under-declared lifting of the nation’s crude oil.

The government says $406,751,070 is the total sum of the missing revenues from the shortfall/undeclared/under-declared crude oil shipments of the government, including interest on the money.

In reconciling the export records from Nigeria with the import records from respective ports of entry in the USA in the case of the two Shell companies and others, the Data on shipment of the company, including its Bills of lading, Oil Vessels name used for the shipment, date of arrival at the destination ports, ports of origin, were used to identify the buyers of the undeclared Nigerian crude oil, and the sellers thereof, as well as quantity of crude oil exported from Nigeria. The same data for the same shipment imported into the United States were compared, and the comparison showed that the crude oil shipments declared to have been exported from Nigeria was less than what was declared to have been imported into the US, using the same shipment by the same vessel on the same bill of lading while on the other hand, some other shipments were not declared by the defendants to the requisite authorities, particularly the pre-shipment inspection Agents. In some instances, the crude oil shipments were completely undeclared.