MILAN -(Dow Jones)- A Milan judge Tuesday postponed until next month a hearing on a request to ban Eni SpA (E) and Saipem SpA (SPM.MI) from operating in Nigeria, as the two energy firms are alleged to be part of a scheme that bribed officials in the West African country.
Judge Mariolina Panasiti postponed the hearing until Oct. 21, said Paola Severino, an Eni lawyer, at the end of a hearing at the court house in Milan.
"The judge has adjourned the hearing in order to have more time to translate documents from English to Italian," said Severino.
Eni and Saipem, the oil services company it controls, risk a temporary ban from working with Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. in the West African country as part of an investigation by Milan prosecutors into alleged graft that took place up to 2004.
Milan prosecutors Fabio De Pasquale and Sergio Spadaro called for the ban in July.
Eni, which has been cooperating with the prosecutors, has said its future results could suffer from a negative outcome of the case. In April, Chief Executive Paolo Scaroni said Eni was following the "matter with a lot of attention."
The probe centers around TSKJ, a private company comprising Technip SA (TEC.FR) of France; Snamprogetti, a former affiliate of Eni; JGC Corporation (1963.TO) of Japan and KBR Inc. (KBR), which was spun off by Halliburton (HAL) two years ago.
Snamprogetti is now part of Saipem.
In February, U.S. authorities said Halliburton Co. (HAL) and KBR agreed to pay $579 million in fines after pleading guilty to criminal charges for bribing Nigerian government officials for more than a decade.
The two companies admitted they paid millions of dollars to Nigerian government officials as part of a joint venture to win contracts worth more than $6 billion to build a liquefied natural gas plant on Bonny Island.
According to the Department of Justice, KBR was part of a four-company joint venture - referring to TSKJ - that received the contracts. As part of its plea, KBR admitted to conspiring with those partners to promise and pay bribes.
-By Sabrina Cohen and Liam Moloney, Dow Jones Newswires; +39 02 5821-9906; sabrina.cohen@dowjones.com