• Arcelor Mittal, inspections of the carabinieri in the plant: checks on the hot area
  • Arcelor Mittal, witness: "They told us to use lower quality raw materials"
  • ArcelorMittal sentenced for breach of contract with a company in Modena
  • ArcelorMittal, in the focus of the prosecutors, the communications of Ad Morselli
  • ArcelorMittal. Pm Taranto investigates for destruction of means of production. Investigation also in Milan

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22 November 2019New face to face at Palazzo Chigi between the premier Giuseppe Conte and the top management of ArcelorMittal to try to resolve the dispute over the plants of the former steelworks. Ministers Stefano Patuanelli and Roberto Gualtieri sit with Conte at the table. And also the managing director of Arcelor Mittal Italy Lucia Morselli, considered the face of the negotiation on the former Ilva of Taranto. In the last vertex, with a negative outcome, there were Lakshmi Mittal and Aditya Mittal, father and son, respectively CEO and CFO of Arcelor Mittal.

A story on which you start to see some chink, with Conte decided to ask for certainties about the jobs and the announced redundancies. Only if Ancelor Mittal is prepared to negotiate the numbers will the President of the Council consider whether the topic of the criminal shield should be discussed. The multinational, for its part, has announced that it will participate with 'trust' at the top. A meeting 'certainly not conclusive, but very important', still leaks from ArcelorMittal. There is therefore 'serenity', they still say, on the fact that 'it will be a huge job but we are confident that we can start doing it with the Italian government'.

Conte: "Arcelor Mittal says what he wants to do"
"We cannot accept a disengagement from the contractual commitments: we are clearly told what the position of Mittal is and from there we will leave. If we are guaranteed the possibility of respecting the commitments, I remember that we did not propose the judicial battle, which was promoted from Mittal ". If instead the battle continues "we react adequately". Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said this on the sidelines of the inauguration of the academic year of the High School of Police.

The Milan investigation
The crisis of Arcelor Mittal seen from what, in the stories of its managers, appears a precipice overlooking the end. In the act in which the Milan Public Prosecutor enters the civil case promoted by the extraordinary commissioners of the former Ilva, the most dramatic image is of a manager of the multinational, heard as a witness in the inquiry that hypothesizes the distraction crimes of assets, market manipulation and omission of income: "Despite the suspension of the stop plan, the company does not have all that is needed to continue the activity as the procurement of raw materials has been canceled. The plan envisaged leave a minimum supply of raw materials only for a blast furnace for a month ".

The deputy prosecutor Maurizio Romanelli and the prosecutors Stefano Civardi and Mauro Clerici explain that "the state of crisis of AcelorMittal, as there is a danger of diminishing the financial guarantees for compensation for any damages, makes a judicial ruling that requires Arcelor to be even more urgent and urgent Mittal to refrain from plant shutdowns and to faithfully fulfill the obligations assumed in good faith ".

Pm: the judge's decision to stop implants is urgent, tax shelter is a pretext for withdrawal
According to the Milan Public Prosecutor "the real cause of the termination" of the lease is "attributable to the corporate crisis" of the French-Indian multinational and the consequent desire to disengage the foreign entrepreneur and is not "the absence of this said repealed environmental shield "used as a" pretext "reason.

Testimony in the minutes: "Every stop at blast furnace brings damage"
In his testimony the manager said: "Every stop of a blast furnace and the subsequent cooling, although operated following the best practices is never without damage". Damages whose entity "can only occur when it starts again" adding that "there are always damages".

In September "finished the funds"
In several meetings held from September to today, both the former chief executive Mathieu Jehl, and the new chief executive Lucia Morselli, have declared that the company had exhausted the finance dedicated to the operation "of lease with obligation to purchase the former Ilva. This this is what was reported by a manager of Arcelor Mittal, who was heard by prosecutors in Milan on November 18. The passage of the report is reported in the statement of intervention by the Milan Public Prosecutor in the civil dispute between the multinational and the former Ilva.

700 million expected loss in 2019
"As a forecast, we have about 700 million of losses for 2019 and it is according to the Ias Ifrs accounting principles", has put on record the manager of Arcelor Mittal, Steve Wampach, heard in the investigation of the prosecutor of Milan for distraction of assets, omitted tax returns and false communications to the market.

"To reduce costs, lower the quality of materials"
"The foreign managers argued that for the current 'gear' of the plants (that is to say the production of 6 million tons of steel), the quality of the raw materials was too high and that it was necessary to use lower quality to cut costs" . This is a passage from the deposition of Giuseppe Frustaci, director of Arcelor MittalItalia, heard by the prosecutors in Milan two days ago. The report is reported in the act of intervention of the Public Prosecutor in the civil dispute between the Franco-Indian multinational and the former Ilva.

"Doing like in Krakow, Poland"
"We were told by the group's CEO, Gert Van Poelvoorde, that similar measures to downsize the production facilities, in terms above all of the factories' stop, had been taken in other countries, for example in Poland at the Krakow plant". Words recorded in the minutes, as part of the investigation by the Milan Public Prosecutor on Arcelor Mittal, by the manager.

Arcelor Mittal: "Prudence"
Sources of Arcelor Mittal consulted by the AGI, call for caution in reading the document "because the prosecutors have not reported the questions, but only some answers of the managers who must be contextualized".

Inspection of the carabinieri in the plant
In the morning there was an inspection by proxy of the Public Prosecutor's Office in the Arcelor Mittal iron and steel plant in Taranto by the carabinieri of the Noe of Rome, the Nucleus on safety at work and the provincial command in the context of the investigations started after the commissioners were exposed Ilva. The attention of the carabinieri of Rome and Taranto is focused on "a careful control of the hot area" to ascertain if there has been impoverishment of the raw materials, if maintenance has been carried out or if the plants represent a danger for the workers, then an overall verification of mineral parks, conveyor belts, coking plants, agglomerates, blast furnaces and steelworks in general

The verifications concern the reclamation operations in the plant, the general situation of the factory, the maintenance activities carried out so far and the safety on the job. Ispra will also collaborate in these investigations. The crimes of "Destruction of means of production" and "Misappropriation" are hypothesized, last Monday there was an inspection by the Guardia di Finanza (with acquisition and seizure of documents, IT and cellular supports) in the offices of the plant. The inspection of the carabinieri, under the coordination of the provincial command, had already been planned by the prosecutor Carlo Capristo, the deputy prosecutor Maurizio Carbone and the deputy prosecutor Mariano Buccoliero, who are in charge of the investigation. The objective, we learn from judicial sources, is to "take a photograph of the places to verify the conditions of the establishment according to what emerged from the report by the extraordinary commissioners". The Milan deputy prosecutor Maurizio Romanelli speaks of "maximum collaboration between the Milan Public Prosecutor's Office and that of Taranto," no clash says, but cooperation with information exchange.

Di Maio: "The penal shield was an excuse"
"The prosecutor, and not the M5s or those bad guys from the movement's Tarantini parliamentarians today said that the criminal shield was an excuse: the truth that Mittal wants to get away from Taranto is linked to the fact that the business plan was wrong. the judiciary because it has shown that we are a country system and we know how to defend the interests of Italians even without coordinating with each other. Thus the political leader of the M5s, Luigi Di Maio, in Castlevetrano (Tp).

Sassoli: "The company does not spoil Italy"
"I see that the government is very committed to finding a solution and I hope that the attitude of the company is the right one. We understand the difficulties but we believe that losing industrial assets would be a great problem for Italy but in this case also for the "Europe. We therefore also appeal to property to have the incentive not to desertificate a country like Italy," said European Parliament President David Sassoli on the sidelines of an event in Genoa.