- League: "Conte reports urgently on the Fiber case"
- Count: on Fiber case clarified with Competition Authority
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05 November 2019 "The request to report on the question of an alleged conflict of interests allows me to clarify a matter that has been the subject of attention of various press organs. In particular, some articles have proposed reconstructions very far from the truth of the facts , likely to accredit completely distorted confusions and reconstructions, and I thank the parliamentarians who requested this information, which allows me to clarify - I trust definitively - the story ". President Giuseppe Conte said this at the beginning of his speech to the Chamber to report on the Fiber case.The clarifications
"I have read that some media reports refer to a meeting in Milan, on the evening of May 13, with the leaders of the two parties who then supported the new executive. I specify that this first meeting, evidently interlocutory with respect to the assignment of the assignment of government (happened, I remember, on May 23, following the designation by the parliamentary groups which took place only on May 21st), it intervened however days later from the acceptance of the assignment and when the study activity of the question The legal and the drafting of the opinion was now complete. To confirm this, I specify that the opinion was delivered the following day, May 14. "
Golden Power
"For greater clarity and to dispel any remaining doubts, I specify that the opinion itself did not concern the decision about whether to exercise the Golden Power, which is the responsibility of the Government, but concerned exclusively the applicability or otherwise of the relative discipline and, therefore, the necessity to notify or not the operation to the Government, this is the competence of the Company, nevertheless, in order to avoid any possible form of conflict of interest, even if only indirect, once invested with the position of President of the I refrained from any activity or any form of formal and substantial involvement regarding the decision about the exercise of Golden Power in the Retelit operation. 6 June 2018, with which I informed him of my determination to abstain from any act and, in any case, from the participation in any form of this procedure. Consequently, I did not take part in the meeting of the Council of Ministers on 7 June 2018, during which the matter was examined. I specify that the entire session of the Council of Ministers was presided over by the then Vice President and Minister of the Interior, Matteo Salvini ".
"Correctness of my work certified by the Italian Competition Authority"
"Subsequently - Conte continues - the issue has returned to the attention of the Presidency of the Council for the sanctioning procedure against the company Retelit, for the tardiness of the notification of the operation. Also for this last question, with a letter addressed to the Secretary General pro tempore and registered on 8 August 2018, I declared my intention to abstain from any form of direct and indirect, formal and substantial, delegating for all the related activities and for the entire proceeding the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior, Matteo Salvini: In conclusion, I have never taken part in the decisions concerning the Golden Power operating procedure relating to the Retelit transaction, although, as already stated, my opinion did not concern this profile of the decision, but only the profile preliminary concerning the existence or not of the obligation to notify the Government of the operation the integrity of my work was also certified by the Italian Competition Authority, institutionally appointed, in our system, to monitor the conflict of interest of the members of the Government ".
The days of May 2018
"In the early days of May 2018, when I was still working as a lawyer and I had not yet been appointed Chairman of the Board (I recall, in this regard, that the first assignment was given to me on May 23rd), I received from the company Fiber 4.0 I mandate to draw up a pro-veritate legal opinion on the applicability of the so-called Golden Power regulations and the consequent notification obligations (article 2 of decree-law n. 21 of 15 March 2012) with reference to the operations carried out with the company Retelit Although not strictly related to the subject matter of the disclosure, I would like to point out that this was the only professional contact I had with Fiber 4.0, having never performed any other assistance or defense, judicial or extrajudicial, for it.
The Vatican finances
In order to draft the opinion and respond to the legal question I had been asked, I examined the documents sent to me, without ever meeting the directors or shareholders of the Company. I was therefore not aware - nor was I obliged to know - that among the investors there was Mr. Raffaele Mincione or that part of the investments went back, as has been hypothesized by some press organs, to Vatican finances. I accepted the assignment to draw up the opinion for the Fiber 4.0 company when I had not yet been appointed Prime Minister, at a time when I myself could not imagine that shortly thereafter an executive would preside over me, which would then be has been called upon to decide on the exercise or not of Golden Power with regard to the Retelit transaction ".
The Fiber case
The premier's statement was made in relation to the alleged conflict of interest connected to a professional assignment assumed by the prime minister himself prior to the government appointment, the so-called 'Fiber case', raised by the Financial Times and ridden by the center-right, with the request of clarifications. According to the City newspaper, a Vatican-backed investment fund at the center of an investigation into a financial corruption case would be linked to Conte. The British financial newspaper states that this connection on the basis of some documents it claims to have examined could lead to the start of investigations by the Vatican Secretariat of State, which is itself the subject of an internal investigation into suspicious financial transactions ".
Premier Conte, adds the British newspaper, "was commissioned to draw up a legal opinion in favor of Fiber 4.0 last year, a group involved in the control of Reselit, an Italian telecommunications company. The main investor of Fiber 4.0 was the Athena Global Opportunities fund, funded entirely by the Vatican secretariat of state ". A fund, in turn, "owned by Raffaele Mincione, an Italian financier". "The origin of the Mincione fund was never declared in the shareholders' battle for control of Retelit," the Financial Times writes, "and it was unknown before the Vatican police in October proceeded to search the offices of the Secretariat for the purpose of seize documents and computers "on a" deal around a luxury property in London dealt with Athena ".
The Mincione fund, however, failed to gain control of Retelit, because the shareholders decided to focus on the German Shareholder Value Management and the Libyan telecommunications company. It is at this point that Mincione would have turned to Conte as legal expert to change the result of the vote. "In his memory dated May 14, 2018," the Financial Times continues, Conte wrote that the shareholders' vote "could be canceled if Retelit had been placed under the rules of the golden power, which allow the Italian government to block foreign control of companies considered strategic at national level ". A step that was not enough for Fiber 4.0 to change the outcome of the shareholders' vote, the Financial Times states. Mincione told the British newspaper that he had never met the current prime minister personally.