Saipem has been cleared of wrongdoing for a historic Algerian contract, while Brazil has barred the company from winning new work for two years.
Brazil’s Controladoria-Geral da União (CGU) announced an investigation into Saipem in 2019. The probe focused on a contract from the BM-S-11 consortium in December 2011, for a gas pipeline.
Saipem said there had been “alleged irregularities in the award”. The CGU amended its previous ban, from December 2022, with this new order of a two-year suspension.
The Italian contractor said the sanction had been altered as the CGU had seen how effective Saipem’s compliance programme now was.
The company noted that the suspension applied only for new work, rather than ongoing projects. It applies only to deals with the government, it said.
Saipem further said that it intended to appeal the decision.
In 2019, the company said the CGU had notified its French and Brazilian subsidiaries of the investigation. It applied to a contract worth 56 million euros from Petrobras, for a pipeline connecting the Lula and Cernambi fields in the Santos Basin.
However, Saipem has also reported further success in fighting its corner in Algeria.
The company said that following appeals, the Algerian Supreme Court had ruled against criminal proceedings begun in December 2022 that targeted Saipem. This case focused on a 2008 tender for front-end engineering and design (FEED) on the Rhourde Nouss project.
Saipem said the court had rejected all the appeals and definitively confirmed the company’s acquittal.
Initially, in January 2023, an Algiers court had found Saipem inflated the price of contracts and imposed a small fine. Saipem objected and took the case to the Court of Appeal, which ruled in the company’s favour in April 2023.
Recommended for you
