Italian energy company Edison has said its Norwegian subsidiary has been defrauded of 12.5 million euros.
"Edison announces that the Edison Norge company, based in Norway and controlled by Edison International, in turn wholly owned by Edison Exploration & Production (Edison E&P), has been subject to a financial fraud of the value of approximately 12.5 million euros completed at the end of 2019," Edison said in a statement.
The company said last Thursday it had immediately filed a complaint against the scammers with the Norwegian and Hong Kong police, without providing details on why the Hong Kong police would be relevant to the case.
Edison said: "The first checks carried out by the competent authorities excluded any liability of the employees of the Edison group, highlighting, in fact, that they were unaware victims of the deception and also actively collaborated both with the local authorities, to encourage the successful outcome of the investigations, both with the company in internal and external initiatives undertaken following fraudulent events."
"Edison also activated all the appropriate resources to collaborate with the competent authorities in order to support investigative activities and to facilitate the recovery of the stolen sums. In this sense, Edison has given a mandate to its lawyers to take actions against the companies receiving the fraudulent payments and the financial intermediaries that have allowed them, as well as against the scam authors," the company added.
The company did not provide any details on the transaction that led to its loss of 12.5 million euros.
Worth noting, Edison Norge is a subsidiary of Edison E&P, which is a part of the sale process by Edison to Greek Energean.
"The financial impact of the expected fraud, which could, however, be reduced due to the actions taken to recover the sums, will be included in Edison's losses from discontinuing operations, due to the previously announced disposal of the E&P activities," Edison said.
According to the company's website, Edison Norge currently operates five offshore licenses in Norway and is a partner in nine more.
The sale of Edison E&P to Energean was supposed to complete in 2019, however, it didn't obtain government approval from Algerian authorities.
The sale is expected to close in 2020, possibly excluding the Algerian assets sale to Energean, as Edison was recently invited by the Algerian authorities to discuss the disposal of the assets located in Algeria with Sonatrach.