A few days before the start of the presidential elections on January 24, a scandal surrounding alleged illegal influence has shaken Italian politics.

According to the public prosecutor's office in Milan, Beppe Grillo, founder and honorary chairman of the left-wing populist Five Star Movement, is suspected of having exerted political influence on behalf of the shipping company Moby Lines in return for payments of at least 240,000 euros.

Matthias Rub

Political correspondent for Italy, the Vatican, Albania and Malta based in Rome.

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Grillo came into the focus of the investigators in connection with the bankruptcy protection proceedings recently initiated by Moby Lines. As part of the bankruptcy proceedings, advertising contracts were secured from shipping company boss Vincenzo Onorato, which Moby Lines had concluded in 2018 and 2019 with the operating company of Beppe Grillo's blog. Grillo's office was also searched by investigators.

From chats and short messages, it appears that the payments were not fees for banner advertising or similar on Grillo's website, but that Grillo, in return for the money, was influencing five-star politicians in the government coalition at the time in favor of the shipping company should.

In addition to parliamentarians from the movement, Grillo is said to have contacted the then Minister of Transport, Danilo Toninelli, on behalf of Moby Lines.

The Ministry of Transport in Rome is responsible for issuing and extending licenses for national and international ferry traffic.

Five Star Movement strongest force in the coalition

Grillo did not comment on the investigations that became known on Wednesday. A lawyer for the shipping company boss Onorato said his client and Grillo had been "friends for around 45 years", so it was quite possible that the investigators "misunderstood something" when looking at the documents. Onorato himself said he had faith that investigators would determine he was not guilty.

The investigators also searched the Milan headquarters of the IT company Casaleggio, which operated the online platform “Rosseau” for the Five Star Movement for years. Until the break with the movement last year, all member surveys were organized by the platform. The company was founded in 2004 by Gianroberto Casaleggio, who co-founded the Five Star Movement in 2009 with his friend Beppe Grillo. Money from Moby Lines is also said to have flowed to Casaleggio GmbH in an amount that the investigators were convinced was disproportionate to the officially provided services.

The Five Star Movement owes much of its rise to become the country's strongest political force in the last parliamentary elections of 2018 to its promise to stamp out rampant corruption in politics and to give citizens, instead of lobbyists, significant opportunities to influence political decisions.

In the current broad coalition under Prime Minister Mario Draghi, the Five Star Movement is formally the strongest force.