And someone is lying about the association Più Voci unearthed in our investigation, but who?
As a matter of fact, it was by following the money and by sifting through the party’s bank and accounting documents that we found two other relevant pieces of the puzzle: a financial securities portfolio with holder Matteo Salvini’s party and Più Voci, a cultural association that, after the sentencing on fraud charges against the State, provided a vehicle to collect donor money from friends in the corporate world. The investigative reporting about a vanished treasure of the Lega featured on the cover of L’Espresso on 1 April 2018 with the headline Salvini's secret bank accounts. It revealed for the first time the existence of a financial patrimony of the Lega made up of Italian Treasury bonds as well as corporate bonds. In other words, in addition to cash, the party could count on a substantial amount of financial resources partially invested in corporate bonds, a kind of security that a political party is not allowed to hold.
Mr. Maroni was still the federal secretary of the Lega in December 2013 when the party held 11.2 million euros. Two thirds were Italian treasury bills, the rest corporate bonds, in addition to 380,000 euros invested in a derivative tracking the performance of the FTSE MIB, the Italian main stock index at the Milan Stock Exchange. Put otherwise, it all shows a party, which flouting the law, while trumpeting official statements against financial speculation, decided to risk quite a lot to keep hold of campaign reimbursements. The strategy didn’t change with Mr. Salvini making it to the top. In particular, the fresh minister bet 1.2 million euros on Mediobanca, Arcelor Mittal and Gas Natural stocks.
Furthermore, canvassing the Lega bank balances brought to the light a further unexplained fact: between December 2013 and May 2014 the assets of Lega plummeted to 6.6 million euros from 14.2 million. How so much money could be spent so swiftly is still one of the mysteries of today’s “sovereigntist” party now under the limelight of the Genoa Prosecutor and of the Guardia di Finanza (Italy’s financial law enforcement body). Searches at the premises of Sparkasse, a bank where the Carroccio kept its liquidity over one time span, aim at tracking back money transfers to other countries. The detectives are focusing in particular on past investments in Luxembourg, on the belief that the material they might seize could help answer a number of questions. The funds so suddenly vanished went at some point through the very accounts, about which L'Espresso reported already in 2015 in another investigative report that went by the headline Caccia al tesoro padano (On the Hunt for the Treasure of the Padania). The charges the prosecutor’s office filed still indicate unknown perpetrators. The possibility that the Sparkasse accounts were a vehicle for money laundering operations is one of the directions the probe is pursuing.
The main task revolves now around trailing the money the Court ordered to be seized following the conviction on fraud charges.
What is patent is that the Lega did not provide yet full clarity on the role the association Più Voci played. L'Espresso revealed in its investigative piece Salvini's Secret Accounts that the organization founded in autumn 2015 received large donations from private sources. The managers of Più Voci were three accountants from Lombardy that Salvini wanted by his side in the new party: Giulio Centemero, treasurer, and Alberto Di Rubba and Andrea Manzoni, assistants. Despite no public or known social or political activity of Più Voci, the organization was the recipient of several wires. The funds — 313,000 euros over a few months, between late 2015 and mid 2016 — came in, stayed there for a while, and were transferred again to… Well, other accounts held by companies with close ties to the Lega Nord, like a couple firms in which Mr. Salvini's favorite accountants held top positions: Radio Padania and Mc Srl, the publisher of the online outlet Il Populista, a new tool in Mr. Salvini’s propaganda network.
As we wrote, Più Voci was, in particular, the beneficiary of two wire transfers totaling 250,000 euros from an account in the name of Luca Parnasi's real estate company Pentapigna. Yes, that is the very man who was to build the new soccer stadium in Rome, and was recently jailed on corruption charges in the investigation that is threatening to overwhelm the Five Star Movement Rome’s government. "I know him personally as a decent person," Matteo Salvini said about him after his arrest. The Minister clearly forgot to mention the 250,000 euros Mr. Parnasi paid to the association that is managed by the three accountants with ties to the inner circle of Lega. On the other hand, the Roman developer was not the Lega’s only benefactor. L'Espresso documented how the supermarket chain Esselunga also donated 40,000 euros. It was the investigation of the prosecutor’s office in Rome that moved our story forward with the recent arrest of Luca Parnasi. When he received our calls asking about the wire transfers to the Più Voci he appeared very nervous — the investigator were intercepting his phone calls. Like Mr. Salvini, he chose not to answer our questions, but he confided to one of his aids that the money had been used to finance in Milan Stefano Parisi’s mayor campaign in 2016 (Mr. Parisi was candidate for the right-leaning camp that included the Lega). Were this to be true, it would contradict the version Mr. Centemero gave when he told our reporters that "The funds raised were not transferred to the party or used for any activity of a political nature, such as electoral campaigns.”
What became apparent is that, as soon as the Parnasi group learned about our investigation, its men dove into the search for a justification for the financing. Through his accountant, the real estate developer got in touch with Andrea Manzoni, one of Mr. Salvini’s very loyal accountants, and told him that he needed to “have something done retroactively.” "I told you that that would turn into a pain," he added referring to our requests for clarifications. It was the following transcribed paragraph, however, that showed how much havoc our requests arose: Mr. Parnasi even suggested to one of his aids "creating a backdated document to show the disbursement as made in favor of Radio Padania.” Why so much concern? At any rate, as soon as Mr. Parnasi realized that there was nothing he could do about L’Espresso publishing its scoop, he gave in: "Whatever, to a degree this is a good thing because everybody will know now that we are close to the Lega, which is about to be part of the government.” This matched the point of view of Luigi Bisignani, an unquenchable wheeler dealer, who first thing asked his friend how many entrepreneurs had donated money to the Più Voci Lega association. "A dozen," replied Parnasi. The point is that his number of donors is much higher than those tracked by our investigation. Later Bisignani told his friend that "there was no need to respond to journalists, but [that they should] rather ride with it,” because, after all, he was friend with the ones who counted since he had “financed the Lega and the M5S.” More evidence is needed to claim that the man in charge of building the big stadium project in Rome did also provide funds to the M5S. However, the wiretap reveals an unprecedented insight into new power dynamics in Italy, as well as one old one: in the same conversation the two argue that "nobody [from the left camp] will want to speak out" about them financing the Lega, because "they too know Pentapigna,” his company.
Should the Rome prosecutors’ probe confirm the existence of non-official channels used by the Lega to finance the party, to avoid thus a likely seizure of the money, then the chapter Hunt for the Padanian Treasure would need to be kept open. In our latest investigative piece featured on the magazine’s cover on 3 June 2018, An offshore Europe Salvini Likes, we gave a first account on the method the Lega Nord used to lock up an estate worth millions. Delving into the businesses of the trio of accountants close to the Lega’s inner circle, Centemero-Di Rubba-Manzoni, L'Espresso uncovered a web of small businesses whose original underwriters are impossible to track down because the companies are all controlled by a trust located far out, in Luxembourg. The cashiers of the Lega answered our questions with the claim that those companies have nothing to do with the party. In spite of being managed by professionals with public roles in Parliament, the cashiers of the Lega state that the version that those are private businesses. The accounting professionals themselves, a choice of Mr. Salvini, curiously enough maintain ties with Luxembourg, a European tax haven, led for years by the hawk of the budget constraints, Jean-Claude Juncker, the President of the European Commission. Well, it is precisely to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg that the Genoa prosecutor just sent a rogatory request to investigate financial flows originating in Italy and related to the Bossi scam.
Traslation by Guiomar Parada
