Ep62 - Eni: from €15 million to €5 million

Yesterday, I showed that, following the judgment of September 29, 2014, there were contacts between the lawyers representing the parties in Italy.

Those discussions culminated, on January 20, 2015, in my lawyer formally submitting a request for €5 million as compensation for the damages I claimed to have suffered over those years.

There appeared to be an opportunity to finally bring an end to a dispute that had already lasted more than a decade.

But an amicable settlement was not reached.

Eni decided to continue the legal battle.

The company appealed the judgment of the Civil Court of Rome that had rejected its claim against me and the Brazilian Institute for Business Ethics (Instituto Brasileiro de Ética nos Negócios).

But something changed on appeal.

And that detail deserves attention.

In the original lawsuit, Eni had quantified its alleged damages at €15 million.

The Court rejected the claim, referring critically to the way the damages had been quantified at the substantial sum of €15 million.

Then, on appeal, Eni reduced its damages claim from €15 million to €5 million.

A reduction of €10 million - two-thirds of the amount originally claimed.

Coincidence or not, there was a particularly curious fact in that sequence.

Shortly before, during the discussions that followed the judgment, my lawyer had formally submitted to Eni a request for €5 million for the professional, financial, moral and reputational damages I claimed to have suffered.

Now, on appeal, €5 million had also become the amount Eni was seeking against me and the Institute.

I have no documentary evidence that allows me to state that there was a connection between these two amounts.

But the chronological and financial coincidence exists - and it is part of the reconstruction of events:

🔹 Eni claimed €15 million.

🔹 The Civil Court of Rome declared the claim unfounded and rejected the lawsuit.

🔹 There was an attempt to reach a settlement between the parties.

🔹 No settlement was reached.

🔹 Eni appealed - and reduced its claim to €5 million.

The case, therefore, did not end.

It continued for several more years before the Italian courts.

And on October 16, 2019, the Rome Court of Appeal would rule on that dispute.

But before we reach that point, there is another part of this story that needs to be told.

After so many years of trying to bring the documents to the company’s internal channels and different levels of governance, the dispute was beginning to move definitively beyond the corporate walls.

Tomorrow, I will continue from exactly this point.


❎ Learn more:

1️⃣ Civil Court of Rome Judgment:
🔹 original in Italian
🔹 English

2️⃣ Fax from Micali to D’Ercole:
🔹 original in Italian
🔹 English

3️⃣ Memorial (1999–2025)

4️⃣ Chronology of Facts for the Reconstruction of Events