Corruption probe: Chakib Khelil met Paolo Scaroni at a Paris hotel for shady deals

An examining magistrate at the Italian court of Milan has questioned the former manager of Saipem Algeria, Tulio Orsi, with the aim of collecting incriminating evidence against former Algerian Energy Minister Chakib Khelil for direct involvement in corruption practices in the conclusion of lucrative hydrocarbons’ deals between Saipem and Algeria’s oil and gas company Sonatrach.

Italian judicial sources said that the examining magistrate in charge of the preliminary investigations, Alfonsa Ferraro, was informed by the witness during the latest hearing that Chakib Khelil had met at a Paris hotel with former Saipem’s executive manager Paolo Scaroni to conclude shady deals including colossal grafts estimated at several million Euros to the detriment of Saipem and Sonatrach companies.

Tulio Orsi also reportedly told the Italian judge that Chakib Khelil was accompanied during the Paris encounter with Paolo Scaroni by his right-hand man, namely Farid Bedjaoui, who also conducted several other dubious missions abroad on behalf of Chakib Khelil who is now wanted by both the Algerian and Italian justice over widespread corruption charges alongside other members of his inner circle including Farid Bedjaoui himself.

Farid Bedjaoui, an Algerian consultant who was educated in Montreal and occasionally resides there, is suspected of being a conduit for more than $200-million in suspicious payments, possibly bribes, from multiple multinational corporations in the oil and gas services sector, a joint investigation by The Globe and Mail and Il Sole 24 Ore, Italy’s business newspaper, has found.

Sources close to the investigations in Europe and Canada believe that SNC and the Italian oil services firm Saipem SpA relied on Farid Bedjaoui, the nephew of former Algerian foreign affairs minister Mohammed Bedjaoui, to obtain contracts from Sonatrach.

Mr. Bedjaoui is one of several foreign agents hired by SNC who have fallen under suspicion for allegedly paying bribes.

The blue-chip company, which is Canada’s largest engineering firm and is responsible for infrastructure projects from Africa to South America to China, is engulfed in a growing scandal over the lengths to which it went to obtain contracts.

SNC’s former chief executive, Pierre Duhaime, has been criminally charged with fraud and using falsified documents in connection with the company’s successful bid to build a Montreal hospital.

Its former head of international construction, Riadh Ben Aissa, has been jailed by Swiss prosecutors since April as part of an investigation into an estimated $160-million that flowed from SNC to Saadi Gadhafi, the third-born son of the late Libyan ruler Moammar Gadhafi.

But the investigation by both newspapers has found that the Swiss probe is not confined to Libya, nor is it limited to SNC. Sources close to the operation said that Swiss authorities had been examining alleged payments SNC made to companies controlled by Farid Bedjaoui and came across similar allegedly suspicious payments to Mr. Bedjaoui’s companies from Saipem, a major Italian oil services company and a subsidiary of the country’s largest oil and gas producer, ENI SpA.

Earlier this year, Investigators in Italy, Switzerland and France executed co-ordinated searches of homes and banks, including Farid Bedjaoui’s Paris apartment and an office of the Swiss private bank EFG. Several Saipem executives are under investigation, including the construction unit’s recently suspended chief operating officer, Pietro Varone, who was so close with Mr. Bedjaoui that the two men launched a wine-making company together outside Naples.

In a statement, SNC acknowledged that Farid Bedjaoui was “involved” with several companies that it had hired in Algeria. “These contracts were negotiated by former employees of the company and, to the best of our knowledge, were ordinary business arrangements at the time,” wrote Leslie Quinton, a spokeswoman for the company.

Ms. Quinton did not respond to questions about when the company first contracted Farid Bedjaoui and what work he did. Mr. Bedjaoui’s website was recently shut down. On it he had described himself as an investment adviser, philanthropist and a consultant who offers “strategic advice” in the oil and gas sector.

He has been close with Algeria’s former energy minister, Chakib Khelil, who left his post in 2010 in a corruption scandal within Algeria. Italian investigators have detailed in court documents that Mr. Bedjaoui reportedly accompanied the former Algerian energy minister to a meeting in Paris with the chief executive of ENI SpA. The executive, Paolo Scaroni, told the Italian media Mr. Bedjaoui was introduced at the meeting as Mr. Chakib Khelil’s “special secretary.”