REDD-Monitor stands in solidarity with Antonio Tricarico of ReCommon. Oil giant Eni has pressed charges against Tricarico for defamation

Eni is trying to silence any critical voices.

Italian multinational corporation Eni is suing Antonio Tricarico of ReCommon on charges of alleged defamation. In a statement on its website, ReCommon states that, “In the report by journalist Daniele Autieri last May, Tricarico highlighted the overlapping timing of the award to Eni of the mining license of the giant gas field of Zohr, off the Egyptian coast, and the dramatic event that saw the kidnapping, torturing and killing of university researcher Giulio Regeni by Cairo security forces.”

Tricarico is now under investigation by the Rome Public Prosecutor’s Office for making a fact-based assertion.

A second RAI “Report” programme, broadcast on 17 November 24 reiterated the overlapping timing of Eni’s mining license and the killing of Giulio Regeni. This second “Report” programme cites confidential Eni emails, documents, and report that also address the timing of the two events.

Eni’s meetings with Egypt’s dictator

The Italian website GreenMe reports that,

Tricarico's statements gain even more weight after Report revealed on Sunday evening that it had come into possession of confidential emails, documents and reports which testify that, in the days when the Regeni case broke out, Eni's top management met with the Egyptian government, just as Cairo was avoiding requests for information from Italian institutions.

In 2017, the New York Times, in a long piece about Regeni’s murder, wrote that,

Weeks before Regeni arrived in Cairo, Eni announced a major discovery: the Zohr gas field, 120 miles off the north coast of Egypt, which contained an estimated 850 billion cubic meters of gas — the equivalent of 5.5 billion barrels of oil.

The article describes Eni’s chief executive, Claudio Descalzi, as “a towering Milanese oilman” who knows the leaders of many countries better than Italy’s ministers do. The New York Times writes that,

As the pressure to solve Regeni’s murder mounted, Descalzi, a regular visitor to Cairo, assured Amnesty International that the Egyptian authorities were ‘‘putting in maximum effort’’ to find Regeni’s killers. He discussed the case at least three times with Sisi [Egypt’s dictator]. According to one official at Italy’s Foreign Ministry, diplomats came to believe that Eni had joined forces with Italy’s intelligence service in a bid to find a speedy resolution to the case.

The New York Times reports that a spokesperson for Eni said that, “the company was ‘horrified’ by Regeni’s death and while it had no responsibility to investigate, it continued ‘to follow the matter very closely’ in its interactions with the Egyptian government”.

REDD-Monitor joins many NGOs in supporting Antonio Tricarico. Heffa Schücking, Director of the German NGO Urgewald comments that,

“Eni’s attempt to silence one of Italy’s leading climate activists shows that Big Oil is not only a threat to our climate but also a threat to democracy and free speech. We stand with ReCommon.”

And Nicholas Hildyard of The Corner House says,

"This attack by Eni is an attack against an entire community of campaigners, researchers and journalists working for climate justice.

"We have worked with Antonio Tricarico since 2001 and have always admired his work holding fossil fuel power to account. We stand in solidarity."

I’ve also known Antonio since the early 2000s, back when ReCommon was called the Campaign to Reform the World Bank. I haven’t seen him for several years but his work featured on REDD-Monitor in May 2016.

Eni, meanwhile, is buying millions of junk carbon credits from Zambia to distract from its continued climate pollution.

Here is ReCommon’s recent statement:

Eni denounces Antonio Tricarico of ReCommon for his interview with RAI Report

Eni, through its head of the legal department Stefano Speroni, who is under investigation as part of the enquiry into illicit dossier-keeping and espionage, has denounced Antonio Tricarico of ReCommon in relation to statements Tricarico made during the RAI programme Report on 5 May. Tricarico is now under investigation by the Rome Public Prosecutor’s Office on charges of alleged defamation of the company in the press. In the report by journalist Daniele Autieri last May, Tricarico highlighted the overlapping timing of the award to Eni of the mining license of the giant gas field of Zohr, off the Egyptian coast, and the dramatic event that saw the kidnapping, torturing and killing of university researcher Giulio Regeni by Cairo security forces.

Tricarico’s was a fact-based assertion, which, moreover, was amply supported in the second report broadcast by the Report in the evening of 17 November, in which confidential Eni documents reiterated Tricarico’s assertion.

The accusation against the ReCommon exponent, therefore, appears to be yet another attempt to silence an uncomfortable voice and deny what has emerged in connection with the events surrounding the Regeni case.

Last October, ReCommon, together with Greenpeace Italia, was sued by Eni before the Civil Court of Rome for waging an alleged “campaign of hatred” against the company. The two organisations had rejected Eni’s judicial attack, branding it as an attempt to shift attention away from the Just Cause climate lawsuit they brought against the company in May 2023, which is now pending before the United Civil Sections of the Court of Cassation.

Moreover, it should not be forgotten that in December 2021, Eni had been the protagonist of an “act of preventive censorship” when it ordered the programme Report not to interview Antonio Tricarico in relation to the Nigeria-OPL245 affair because he and ReCommon could not be “worthy interlocutors” of the RAI public broadcasting service.

“ReCommon expresses its solidarity with Antonio Tricarico and reiterates its firm intention to continue its communication and information campaigns on Italy’s leading fossil fuel multinational, exposing its responsibility in the ongoing climate crisis. Instead of trying to limit the freedom of expression of Italian civil society, Eni’s top management would do better to withdraw the complaint against Tricarico and instead carefully assess the actions of the company’s chief legal counsel (who signed the same criminal complaint against Tricarico) searched and investigated by the Milan Public Prosecutor’s Office as part of the notorious investigations into espionage and dossier-keeping through illegal access to public databases,” ReCommon declared.