Conflitto di Interessi per Prodi?

[tolomeo]

va bene per l'ironia... mi posti il link all'articolo del Telegraph che me lo leggo?

ti ho inviato il link in pvt.
si tratta di un libro con prefazione di Emanuele Malacuso, in cui è riportata l'inchiesta e l'articolo virgolettato del Telegraph.
altri dettagli nel pvt.

[estewald]

ti ho inviato il link in pvt.
si tratta di un libro con prefazione di Emanuele Malacuso, in cui è riportata l'inchiesta e l'articolo virgolettato del Telegraph.
altri dettagli nel pvt.

va bene... vedro' di procurarmi una copia... pero' la cosa richiede tempo per me, lo sai che sono in Irlanda, se fosse stato su internet ci avrei messo un attimo.

[tolomeo]

va bene... vedro' di procurarmi una copia... pero' la cosa richiede tempo per me, lo sai che sono in Irlanda, se fosse stato su internet ci avrei messo un attimo.

forse puoi riuscire a procurarti gli articoli originali del Telegraph.
L'inchiesta è stata condotta da un notissimo giornalista: Ambrose Evans-Pritchard.
Se vuoi una copia del libro posso inviartela per posta prioritataria.

[estewald]

forse puoi riuscire a procurarti gli articoli originali del Telegraph.
L'inchiesta è stata condotta da un notissimo giornalista: Ambrose Evans-Pritchard.
Se vuoi una copia del libro posso inviartela per posta prioritataria.

gentilissimo... cmq non ti preoccupare cerchero' le fonti che mi hai segnalato

[tolomeo]

gentilissimo... cmq non ti preoccupare cerchero' le fonti che mi hai segnalato

ecco un link:

Prodi failed to reveal £1.4m in consulting fees
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard


ROMANO PRODI, the incoming President of the European Commission, was paid £1.4 million in consulting fees in the early 1990s that he failed to reveal during his tenure as an Italian public official, in possible violation of Italian law.

According to documents obtained by The Telegraph, the money was paid into a company called ASE, Analisi e Studi Economici, registered in Bologna. The accounts show that revenues averaged about £300,000 a year in 1991 and 1992, when Mr Prodi was in the private sector.

In 1993 the fees rose to more than £455,000, at the prevailing exchange rate. This was the year Mr Prodi went back into government for a second stint as head of the giant Italian state-holding company, IRI, where his main task was to privatise state companies. The payments continued until 1995, falling off gradually.

The exposure of the payments could cause problems for Mr Prodi as his confirmation comes under scrutiny by the newly-elected European Parliament. Conservative MEPs are already concerned by disclosures in The Telegraph last month that he was the target of two other criminal investigations dating from his time at IRI, in which he was cleared.

The unexplained fees could also prove embarrassing for Downing Street, which has assiduously promoted Mr Prodi as a reformer with the right credentials to clean up Brussels after the mass resignation of the Santer Commission on corruption, mismanagement and nepotism charges.

According to Fabrizio Zoli, the company secretary, almost all the money paid into ASE came from two sources, the American bank Goldman Sachs and the American multinational General Electric. But this is contradicted by another Prodi associate familiar with the accounts, Piero Gnudi, who said the money came from Goldman Sachs and the Anglo-Dutch company Unilever.

Analisi e Studi Economici, which had no employees or operating premises, was jointly owned by Mr Prodi and his wife, Dr Flavia Franzoni, a political scientist. But Mr Prodi generated almost all of the consulting fees. There is no suggestion that any of the international companies involved behaved improperly.

The company was not listed by Mr Prodi as a financial interest during his tenure as head of IRI, or later as Italian prime minister. The list of his declared interests in 1993 includes a share in the family castle at Carpineto, in the Tuscan-Emilian Appenines; a share of eight other houses and buildings; a one-year-old Audi 80; and a mix of bank stocks. But it fails to disclose his ownership of ASE, in violation of article 14 of the code governing service by Italian public officials.

This appears an inexplicable oversight given the sums of money involved and raises the question whether Mr Prodi was deliberately concealing the existence of the company. Mr Prodi's spokesman, Ricardo Franco Levi, insists there was no obligation to declare his interest in ASE. He said: "You're mixed up on the law. The professor did not have to disclose this information."

The undeclared payments were the subject of a criminal investigation by the Procura di Bologna in 1996, after the accounts were discovered by an investigative reporter, Antonio Selvatici. By then Mr Prodi was prime minister and widely viewed by the Italian establishment as the only man who could guide Italy safely into economic and monetary union.

The investigation was shut down after three weeks without any explanation. The chief prosecutor, Ennio Fortuna, at first denied to The Telegraph that there had ever been such an investigation. He later admitted that there had been an investigation of ASE, but refused to discuss the details.

Significantly, Analisi e Studi Economici did not pay a dividend during the crucial 1993 to 1994 period, when Mr Prodi was in government, which meant that he did not have to declare the income on his tax returns for those years. Some of the money was transferred to another company, Aquitania, which invested the funds in Bologna property. This subsidiary was half-owned by a local bank, Credito Emiliano, which appears to have accepted, inexplicably, a passive, loss-making role in the venture.

The surging payments in 1993 raise eyebrows because Mr Prodi was responsible that year for the contentious privatisation of the food conglomerate Cirio-Bertolli-De Rica, in which Mr Prodi's former paymasters at Goldman Sachs had played an advisory role for the buyers. The Cirio group was sold for half of its real value to a front company, according to an expert report commissioned by the Procura di Roma, then immediately resold in part to another of Mr Prodi's former paymasters, the Anglo-Dutch multinational Unilever (Mr Prodi's other ASE client).

In November 1996 a Rome magistrate recommended that Mr Prodi be prosecuted for abuse of office and conflict of interest in the affair. The judge dismissed the case before trial, but not without criticising Mr Prodi's conduct. To add to the murky picture, ASE's company secretary, Fabrizio Zoli, the man who guaranteed the accounts, is on trial in an unrelated case involving construction fraud.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/htmlConte...2/wprod12.html

[tolomeo]

e ancora !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


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.


Romano Prodi: has the support of his fellow Italians
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.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/htmlConte...04/wpro04.html

[estewald]

lungo e interessante articolo di sospetti e supposizioni... domani me lo leggo con calma e verifico con altre fonti. Ti faccio solo notare che finisce con:
Legally, he is now as clean as whistle.

che tradotto vuol dire
"giuridicamente e' ora pulito come uno specchio"

chissa' se possiamo dire lo stesso di Berlusconi... direi proprio di no...

l'articolo non mi sembra parlare di leggi ad personam fatte da lui per scampare il giudizio, e tra le altre cose dice che la stampa italiana e' largamente controllata dagli alleati di Prodi (nel caso di Berlusconi e' lui che la controlla direttamente, non suoi alleati), cosa quantomeno discutibile, visto che il numero di testate che fa capo al cdx e' largamente superiore a quello che fa capo al csx (il numero di copie vendute non fa testo, mica puoi costringere la gente a comprare un giornale che non gli piace, a quel punto avrebbe dovuto dire che gli alleati di Prodi controllano i giornali piu' letti dalla gente, che e' estremamente diverso)... ma questi sono dettagli che fanno capire che questo giornale non ha simpatie di sx e non inficiano la restante parte del discorso, anzi viste le conclusioni direi che danno maggiore risalto al fatto che Prodi risulta pulito...

In ogni caso complimenti per la tenacia della ricerca (sebbene la conclusione sia che Prodi e' pulito come uno specchio va comunque letta con attenzione), ci tornero' su senz'altro, adesso mi aspetto un bel 3d nel quale fai le pulci allo stesso modo a Berlusconi.

[tolomeo]

lungo e interessante articolo di sospetti e supposizioni... domani me lo leggo con calma e verifico con altre fonti. Ti faccio solo notare che finisce con:
Legally, he is now as clean as whistle.

che tradotto vuol dire
"giuridicamente e' ora pulito come uno specchio"

chissa' se possiamo dire lo stesso di Berlusconi... direi proprio di no...

l'articolo non mi sembra parlare di leggi ad personam fatte da lui per scampare il giudizio, e tra le altre cose dice che la stampa italiana e' largamente controllata dagli alleati di Prodi (nel caso di Berlusconi e' lui che la controlla direttamente, non suoi alleati), cosa quantomeno discutibile, visto che il numero di testate che fa capo al cdx e' largamente superiore a quello che fa capo al csx... ma questi sono dettagli che fanno capire che questo giornale non ha simpatie di sx e non inficiano la restante parte del discorso, anzi viste le conclusioni direi che danno maggiore risalto al fatto che Prodi risulta pulito...

In ogni caso complimenti per la tenacia della ricerca (sebbene la conclusione sia che Prodi e' pulito come uno specchio va comunque letta con attenzione), ci tornero' su senz'altro, adesso mi aspetto un bel 3d nel quale fai le pulci allo stesso modo a Berlusconi.

certo, e chi parla di reati ?
la conclusione è sicuramente ironica, come potrai apprezzare.
al giornalista hanno anche vietato di leggere gli atti e la motivazione di assoluzione del giudice.
La Geremia è finita in Sargegna.
non è successo in alcun altro caso, nel decennio di Mani Pulite, un simile trattamento coi guanti.
io non faccio il magistrato, sono solo un elettore. e mi chiedo tante cose. e soprattutto non desidero essere preso per i fondelli.
sappiamo benissimo tutti qui in Italia che essere pregiudicati o clean as a whistle non vuol dire assolutamente nulla. solo forma. a volte anche deformata.
Quanto alle testate controllate da Berlusconi, sai benissimo che sono minime.
Perlomeno per quanto riguarda il numero dei lettori.
Il fatto che Prodi sia alleato dei poteri forti dimostra ancora una volta come sia una figura di amministratore per quei poteri.
ne riparliamo domani.
buona lettura.

:-)

[estewald]

certo, e chi parla di reati ?
la conclusione è sicuramente ironica, come potrai apprezzare.
al giornalista hanno anche vietato di leggere gli atti e la motivazione di assoluzione del giudice.
La Geremia è finita in Sargegna.
non è successo in alcun altro caso, nel decennio di Mani Pulite, un simile trattamento coi guanti.
io non faccio il magistrato, sono solo un elettore. e mi chiedo tante cose. e soprattutto non desidero essere preso per i fondelli.
sappiamo benissimo tutti qui in Italia che essere pregiudicati o clean as a whistle non vuol dire assolutamente nulla. solo forma. a volte anche deformata.
Quanto alle testate controllate da Berlusconi, sai benissimo che sono minime.
Perlomeno per quanto riguarda il numero dei lettori.
Il fatto che Prodi sia alleato dei poteri forti dimostra ancora una volta come sia una figura di amministratore per quei poteri.
ne riparliamo domani.
buona lettura.

:-)

allora non mi sono spiegato bene sul numero di lettori... e' un discorso falso e malposto... quello che devi vedere e' il numero di testate, non il numero di lettori. Se un giornale ha un maggior numero di lettori vuol dire che e' fatto meglio, che e' piu' autorevole, che e' piu' credibile... queste sono cose che non gli puoi togliere, ne' puoi costringere la gente a leggere i giornali del nano...
se il nano e i suoi alleati controllano quasi tutte le testate, ma che insieme non vendono le copie di quei pochi giornali di sx non si puo' dire che la stampa e' in mano alla sx... e' assurdo... casomai che la stampa piu' autorevole e' vicina alla sx, ma questo e' cmq un merito, non un demerito. Sul resto me la leggo domani con calma la verifico e te la commento.

Sta di fatto che ironicamente o no il nano pulito come uno specchio non lo e' manco per scherzo

[brunik]

leggo e noto alcune famose cooperative rosse emiliano romagnole acc

Io leggo Mediolanum SPA, ma Prodi proprio no.

E' da 11 anni che non ha più niente a vedere con Nomisma, lo sapevate?