The ENI France supplier agreed to pay a fine of 275,000 euros to close a dispute around the invoices that have injured more than 77,000 French clients in 2022 and 2023, the repression of the fraud announced on Monday. This transactional fine ends a case launched by an investigation related to erroneous invoice invoices sent to 77,016 clients by ENI Gas & Power France between May 2022 and May 2023, explains the DGCCRF (General Directorate of Repression of Competition, Consumption and Fraud) on its website.
These clients had received “widely decorated deadlines with the increase in electricity prices” that had induced them “by mistake on the amount of energy that will really be billed”, the facts “constituting the crime of deceptive commercial practice”, underlines this service of the Ministry of Economy and Finance. These erroneous invoices could not apply certain measures to protect the “tariff shield” established by the Government to protect the French from energy prices prices following the offensive launched by Russia in Ukraine in February 2022.
Eni had already had to pay 50 million euros to compensate for injured customers. “With the Nanterre prosecution agreement, a transactional fine of 275,000 euros was proposed, provided to the seriousness of the facts to the ENI Gas & Power France company that accepted it,” specifies the DGCCRF. Eni Gas & Power France was called fullness in 2024.
A red mediator of the Energy Mediator in the Spring of 2024
In May 2024, the Energy Mediator had sent a “red card” to four suppliers, including ENI for having “deliberately” that they would undo the insufficiency of “deceiving consumers about the cost of their energy.”
The latter had also noticed a strong increase in disputes linked to price change in 2023. In fact, if the number of references had remained stable compared to 2022 (13,999 in 2023 against 13,751 in 2022), the number of complaints linked to pricing changes had a side of 74%. In this context, the National Energy Mediator Olivier Challan Belval called in a press release “Parliament to be legislated before the end of 2024 to strengthen the protection of energy consumers.”
Source: BFM TV
