Newsgroup: it.politica.ulivo
Titolo: Il neo-presidente della commissione europea: UN INDAGATO.

Electronic Telegraph
ISSUE 1439
Tuesday 4 May 1999 
Criminal inquiries that cast a cloud over the past of Europe's Mr
Clean 
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard 
 
ROMANO PRODI, the incoming President of the European Commission who is
expected to sail through a pro-forma confirmation process this week in
the European Parliament, has been under criminal investigation in
Italy twice during the last 15 years.
It is hard to assess the gravity of the allegations and criticisms
against him. The Italian judicial system is secretive. Although The
Telegraph has obtained some damning documents, most of the key reports
and rulings, as well as sworn testimony, is sealed.
The Italian press is largely controlled by Prodi's allies. During his
successful tenure as Prime Minister, he was seen as the only figure
who could keep Italy on track for the euro. The Italian establishment
- poteri forti - has instinctively closed ranks behind him. For the
Italian people, he has become a national mascot.
Tony Blair moved swiftly in March to replace the disgraced Jacques
Santer with Prodi. At the time, No 10 presented him as the reformer
who had cleaned up Italy. With ties to the LSE, Harvard and the
American bank Goldman Sachs, he was valued as a fully-signed up member
of the Third Way. 
Critics say he is a consummate networker who rose to prominence
through the Christian Democratic Party but deftly re-positioned
himself when the party disintegrated in the "Mani Pulite" corruption
scandals. The allegations mostly stem from Prodi's two tours of duty
as head of the Istituto di Riconstruzione Industriale, IRI, Italy's
biggest state holding company.
Most involve disputes over the privatisation of public companies, a
point of intersection between state and market that often lends itself
to suspicion because of the windfall profits that can be channelled to
cronies. Arguably, the matters involved are more serious than those
that destroyed Santer's presidency.
Santer was never accused of criminal misconduct. The criticisms by
independent experts, never put to the test in a court of law, related
to loss of control over the EC and tolerating cronyism.
"Prodi's done worse things than Santer, without doubt," says Prof
Pietro Armani, Vice-President of IRI from 1980 to 1991, but now an MP
for the anti-Prodi Alleanza Nazionale. He described Prodi's management
of IRI as "disastrous", adding that "he didn't clean up anything
except his external image".
Caution is required because the criminal justice system has frequently
been misused in Italy to settle political scores. But this does not
appear to have been the case with Prodi. "He was never prosecuted with
the same harshness as others," says Massimo Pini, former head of
privatisation at IRI.
Prodi was lucky that his first troubles occurred in the mid-Eighties,
before the "Mani Pulite" purge of the elite. His later troubles
occurred in the mid-Nineties, by which time scandal fatigue had sapped
the will to prosecute politicians and it was felt that zealous
magistrates had gone too far.
Cirio-Bertolli-De Rica
In November 1996, Giuseppa Geremia, a Roman prosecutor, concluded that
there was enough evidence to press charges against Prodi for "abuse of
office" in the privatisation of a food conglomerate, Cirio-Bertolli-De
Rica. She believed that the group had been sold at less than half of
its real value while he was president of IRI in 1993. 
More seriously, she also accused him of criminal "conflict of
interest" because the Bertolli part of the group ended up in the hands
of the Anglo-Dutch company Unilever, where Prodi has been a paid
advisory director from 1990 to 1993. By the time Dr Geremia acted,
Prodi was Prime Minister. The move caused a firestorm. She was
denounced in the media, her offices were broken into and her career
was blighted.
The conglomerate was sold off by IRI in October 1993 to an unknown
company with inadequate capital and ties to the corrupt Christian
Democrats in the South. 
The sale price was 310 billion lire. Months earlier, Credito Italiano
had valued the IRI stake at 600-900 billion lire. The circumstances of
the deal were so bizarre that even Prodi's friend Antonio Bassolini,
now Mayor of Naples, called it a "scandalous and dirty transaction".
According to Corriere della Sera, the purchase company, known as
Fi.Svi, appeared out of nowhere and disappeared again without trace
three months after the deal. By then it had stripped the assets of the
group and sold off different components to third parties, something
that IRI itself had been prohibited from doing.
The Bertolli oil business, which was the best part of the
conglomerate, was resold to Unilever in a revolving door transaction:
Fi.Svi waited for payment from Unilever before it could pay its debt
to IRI.
A lengthy investigation by a team of Neapolitan accountants under Dr
Renato Castaldo concluded that Fi.Svi was a "front" for bigger
commercial interests. Among the 12,500 pages of documentation that
they provided to the Procura di Roma was evidence that Unilever had
allegedly been pulling some of the strings before the deal went
through. 
Prodi had resigned from Unilever in May 1993, on the same day that he
took up his post for the second time as head of IRI. But by then
Unilever was interested in Bertolli oil. He had switched from the
buying side of the deal to the selling side, allegedly without
excusing himself or notifying the IRI council.
Prodi has stated that he was not aware that his method of privatising
Cirio-Bertolli-De Rica would put Bertolli in the hands of his former
paymasters at Unilever. But documents obtained under subpoena suggest
otherwise.
They show that Unilever, Fi.Svi and IRI held meetings together before
the transaction. Minutes of the IRI council meetings, though
incomplete - and in some cases allegedly doctored, according to the
Castaldo investigation - are extremely revealing. They state that the
role of Unilever in the transaction was to be kept "invisible".
Documents gathered by Italian police from the Unilever offices in
Milan show a stream of traffic on the subject. A memo from Goldman
Sachs (London) to Unilever (Milan), dated Aug 24, 1993, marked
"strictly confidential" discusses the deal in depth and states under
the rubric Next Steps: "Fi.Svi is going to call Prodi in order to have
full support in this discussion with Unilever."
Although there is no suggestion that Unilever broke any laws,
documents show that the firm was careful to disguise its role in the
operation. A file note dated 25-11-93, says: "Strictly Private -- the
IRI/Fi.Svi/Unilever triangle is in a delicate state of 'unofficial'
contacts."
Prodi's lawyers have been skilful in shifting the focus of the Italian
press from whether or not he colluded in a dirty deal with Fi.Svi and
lied about it to the cloudier issue of the sale price. The Castaldo
investigation concluded that Cirio-Bertolli-De Rica was sold for less
than half its value, costing the Italian state over 400 billion lire.
But a second panel of experts picked by the judge in the case, Edoardo
Landi, concluded that the price was within acceptable bounds. There
were no better offers and Prodi needed a quick sale to rescue IRI from
submerging in debt. 
On that basis, Judge Landi closed the case before it went to trial. It
is hard to know if he was justified in doing so. While snippets of the
700-page report have been leaked, the full text has not been made
public. The Telegraph was denied access to all the case documents by
court authorities in Rome, including the ruling of the judge. A veil
of secrecy has been drawn over the case.
Dr Geremia, the prosecutor, is now in professional exile in Sardinia,
the Italian equivalent of the Outer Hebrides. She refused to discuss
the matter. "I wanted to let my case speak for itself in court," she
said. "I was not given the chance." 
Nomisma
When Prodi was first appointed president of IRI in November 1982, he
did not sever his relationship with a private economic research
company called Nomisma, which he had founded in his home town of
Bologna a year earlier. He continued to serve as the head of Nomisma's
scientific committee, seemingly a peripheral part of the business, but
in fact the "dominant structure", according to a judge's ruling.
He also brought Nomisma's chief rain-maker with him, installing him as
head of research at IRI, yet allowing him to continue doing Nomisma
business on the side. While the two men held these dual positions,
allegedly without informing the IRI council, a number of substantial
contracts were granted to Nomisma by IRI subsidiaries, and other
agencies of the Italian state. In other words, they were indirectly
awarding contracts to themselves.
This traffic led to censure by the Financial Tribunal (Corte dei
Conti), and to complaints to the criminal authorities by members of
IRI's staff. A lengthy investigation of Prodi by the Procura di Roma
led to the criminal prosecution of two senior government officials and
three members of Nomisma. Prodi himself was absolved in December,
1988, on the grounds that the charges against him did not "reach the
extreme of a crime". 
Essentially, Prodi got off on a technicality. The heads of Italy's
four big state-holding companies were not categorised as public
officials so Prodi, therefore, had not abused his power. He was
fortunate. In the "Mani Pulite" scandals that were to follow, future
heads of IRI would indeed be treated as public officials. The ruling,
by Judge Mario Antonio Casavola, includes some blistering criticisms
of Prodi's behaviour and management style.
It described a revolving door culture between IRI and Nomisma. There
was "no doubt" that IRI research contracts negotiated by Prodi's
right-hand man were generated for the purpose of creating business for
Nomisma. Some of the research projects were of "scarce utility". Once
completed, "it seems that they were neither read nor used". A series
of country studies commissioned by the Foreign Ministry, "were
superficial, outdated, copied from obvious public sources such as
geographic encyclopedia".
The judge concluded that there had been a conspiracy to channel money
through that mechanism to Nomisma. But there was no evidence to link
Prodi, personally, to illegal dealings by other members of Nomisma.
Nomisma came under scrutiny again in 1996, in connection with alleged
over-billing and fraud in the award of a huge research contract by the
state railway.
The prosecutors homed in on Prodi after a wiretap in an organised
crime case picked up gossip about an alleged 3.8 billion lire pay-off
to Prodi through Nomisma but the prosecutors soon concluded that the
lead was not worth pursuing. Although this second investigation of
Nomisma is still technically open, it no longer poses a threat to
Prodi. Legally, he is now as clean as whistle. 
Electronic Telegraph
ISSUE 1440
Wednesday 5 May 1999
 
Prodi must prove he is 'clean', say Tories
By Toby Helm, EU Correspondent in Brussels 
 
THE leader of Britain's Conservative Euro-MPs last night demanded a
full statement from Romano Prodi, president designate of the European
Commission, following a report in The Telegraph revealing that he had
been under criminal investigation twice during the past 15 years.
Edward McMillan-Scott, who heads the 17 British Tories, wrote to the
former Italian prime minister asking for a full explanation of his
business dealings before he is confirmed as successor to Jacques
Santer by the European Parliament.
Mr McMillan-Scott said: "Whoever takes control as commission president
needs to be cleaner than clean. On the face of it Romano Prodi's past
gives grounds for concern rather than reassurance." With parliamentary
hearings to select the new European Commission being held in the
autumn, he said: "He has to be prepared to answer all the questions." 
The Telegraph report gave details of critical documents and quoted an
Italian MP as saying Mr Prodi had done "worse things than Santer,
without doubt". M Santer and his fellow 19 commissioners resigned en
masse in March after a damning independent report into fraud and
mismanagement at the Brussels executive of the EU.
Mr Prodi was selected to succeed M Santer less than a fortnight later.
Tony Blair gave his strong backing and issued a dossier listing his
achievements in reforming the Italian government.
His candidacy, which will need to be endorsed by the new European
Parliament following elections next month, will be overwhelmingly
backed by the present 626 members in a vote today. Mr Prodi has
pledged to increase openness, root out fraud and reform the staff
rules that have fostered a culture of mismanagement and nepotism
throughout the Brussels executive.
Yesterday, he was given a warm reception to a speech in the Strasbourg
assembly in which he spelt out ambitions for his five-year term. But
he was warned by some MEPs that the parliament would want to vet
appointments to his commission. Pat Cox, the Irish leader of the
parliament's Liberal Group, said: "We want to get it right, not to get
it early." The French Gaullist leader, Jean-Claude Pasty, told Mr
Prodi: "You are only at the beginning of a real obstacle course."
Parliamentary leaders agreed last week that the earliest the assembly
could be expected to endorse the new Commission was mid-September,
after 10 days of confirmation hearings. That timetable depends on EU
member governments agreeing with Mr Prodi on nominees by July 21.
A further delay could mean that the current commission, which is
carrying out only routine or urgent business and taking no new policy
initiatives, would remain in place for the remainder of its original
term, due to expire at the end of the year. Under the EU's Amsterdam
Treaty, which came into force on May 1, the commission president
enjoys greater powers to decide on the make-up of his team and
members' portfolios.
Mr Prodi is understood to be planning a greater role for the two
commission vice-presidents, whose number could be expanded to four.
These would then form an inner cabinet around him.
Addressing the final session of the European Parliament before the
June elections, Mr Prodi called for an international conference to
begin planning the post-war future of the Balkan countries and their
gradual integration into the EU.
Integration with the EU was the way forward, not "physical or cultural
separation" as demanded by those responsible for the war. He also
reiterated his demands for the EU to develop its defence capability
and for closer co-ordination of tax policies.
 

Come ha ricordato lui stesso.
L'assoluzione ha inoltre riconosciuto come l'operato di Prodi abbia
portato dei VANTAGGI all'IRI.