Prodi has said that the currency and the sword are the defining characteristics of a superstate. (Sixth Congress For Democracy 13/7/01)
ITALIAN magistrates have begun an inquiry into an alleged attempt on the life of an expert involved in a corruption investigation into the business affairs of Romano Prodi, the European commission president. Judicial sources said Renato Castaldo, 58, an accountant, was given a police escort after his car was almost forced off a motorway. It was also claimed that documents on the Prodi case had been stolen during an earlier break-in at his office. In January last year Castaldo detailed what he believed was evidence of insider dealing, fraud and criminal conspiracy by Prodi and a dozen former business associates. The allegations centred on the 1993 sale of Italgel, a subsidiary of Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale (IRI), the huge Italian state holding company. Prodi was the IRI chairman from May 1993 until mid-1994. Magistrates in Perugia, Umbria, who are handling the Italgel case, said it was likely to be closed soon. "No evidence of wrongdoing has been found," said Nicola Mariano, the chief prosecutor. It is not the first time that investigators dealing with Prodi's past have reported harassment. In 1996 a woman judge who asked for Prodi's indictment while he was prime minister, alleging improper behaviour in the sale of another IRI subsidiary, claimed she found an envelope at home containing a photograph of herself and a dagger. (Sunday Times 28/1/01)
A parliamentary inquiry in Rome is to ask Romano Prodi to give evidence about his role in Italy’s worst terrorist incident, the kidnapping and murder of the former prime minister Aldo Mori. The inquiry wants to know how Mr Prodi knew the location used by the Red Brigades to hide Mr Moro after he was kidnapped in 1978. He claimed his source was a ouija board. (D Telegraph 5/4/00)
The European Commission strongly denied on Tuesday a German newspaper report that President Romano Prodi was being pressured to quit by his 19 fellow commissioners because of doubts about his leadership. "There is absolutely no truth whatsoever in the suggestion that commissioners...are planning in some way to replace Romano Prodi as President of the European Commission," Commission spokesman Jonathan Faull told the EU executive's daily news briefing. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, citing unnamed sources, reported on Tuesday that Prodi was under pressure to quit, saying British commissioners Chris Patten and Neil Kinnock were keen to replace him. It was the second denial on Prodi's future that the EU executive had been forced to issue in as many days. It follows a string of newspaper stories across the continent alleging widespread disappointment at his six months in office. Since January Prodi has also denied numerous Italian media reports that he is eyeing a return to Italian politics. (BRUSSELS, April 4 2000 Reuters)
Mr Romano Prodi, the new President of the Commission, in his address to MEPs at Strasbourg said that corruption would not be tolerated. (The Week in Europe 15/4/99)
Euro MPs are to investigate a corruption scandal which nearly brought down the former Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi before they approve him as the next president of the European commission. They are turning their attention to a series of scandals that enveloped the Italian state holding company IRI. Mr Prodi was chairman in the early nineties. IRI was under more or less continual investigation by magistrates. In 1996 a Rome lawyer lodged a request that Mr Prodi be brought to trial for allegedly abusing his position along with five other members of the company board. The case was rejected on the grounds of lack of hard evidence. This affair was only one of a number of fraud and bribery allegations to hit IRI when Mr Prodi was chairman. A top manager under Mr Prodi was arrested and convicted of bribery in 1993. (Sunday Telegraph 28 March 1999)
In 1996 a Roman prosecutor concluded that there was not enough evidence to press charges against Prodi for abuse of office in the privatisation of a food conglomerate, Cirio-Bertolli-De Rica. She believed the group had been sold for less than half its real value while he was president of IRI in 1993. The company 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 liras. Months earlier it had been valued at up to 900 billion lira. The purchasing company appeared out of nowhere and disappeared again without trace three months after the deal. By then it had been stripped of the assets of the group which were sold off to third parties. It was unable to pay IRI until it had completed the sale of these assets. 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 a year earlier. A number of substantial contracts were granted to Nomisma by IRI. Some of the research projects were of "scarce utility", once completed it seems they were neither read nor used. 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. This led to complaints to the criminal authorities by members of IRI staff. Prodi himself was absolved on the grounds that the charges against him "did not reach the extreme of a crime." (Daily Telegraph 4 May 1999)
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. The money was allegedly paid into a company called AFC, registered in Bologna. The company was not registered as a financial interest during his tenure as head of IRI, or later as Italian Prime Minister. The accounts show that revenues averaged about £30,00 a year in 1991 and 1992, when Mr Prodi was in the private sector. In 1993 the fees rose to more than £455,000, this was the year that Mr Prodi went back into government for a second stint as head of the giant Italian state holding company IRI. The unexplained fees could prove embarrassing for Downing Street, which has assiduously promoted Mr Prodi as the reformer with the right credentials to clean out Brussels after the mass resignation of the entire commission on corruption, mismanagement and nepotism charges. (The Daily Telegraph 12 June 1999)
Mr Prodi the new President of the Commission is on the verge of giving a job to a fellow Italian who was caught up in one of Brussels' biggest ever scandals, Enrico Vinci, a former Secretary General of the European Parliament during one of its most controversial periods. The resurrection of Mr. Vinci's political career will cause consternation amongst MEPs and Commission officials who have demanded that, following the resignations of the European Commissioners last month over fraud and mismanagement, the EU be cleaned up and national Cronyism ended. Mr. Vinci was in charge of the Parliament's administration during the construction of Brussels premises in the mid-1990. He signed inflated building contracts, incorporating vast profit margins, in 1992. The "Espasse Leopold" project cost the European taxpayer $1.2 billion - twice as much per square meter as the nearby council of ministers' building, built at the same time. Rumours of Mafia involvement were rife. Two legal investigations were launched; one of which led to the arrest of an architect and a former Brussels Mayor. Mr. Vinci was never found guilty of corruption, but an enquiry lead by Labour MEP Alan Tomlinson concluded in 1994 that senior officials, including Mr. Vinci, had signed documents he was not entitled to sign and ignored the advice of the financial controller. The Parliament building scandal was not the only one to envelop Mr. Vinci. Earlier he had been embarrassed by his association with Mauro Giallombardo, an Italian Socialist MEP, who was found guilty of money laundering on behalf of the Italian former Prime Minister Bettino Craxi. Craxi fled to Tunisia in 1993 to escape goal for corruption and embezzlement. (Sunday Telegraph 18/4/99)
A STATE prosecutor received death threats after requesting a criminal indictment of Romano Prodi and later saw her investigation into the former Italian prime minister sabotaged by the authorities in Rome, an Italian judge has claimed. The allegations are contained in a book, High Speed Corruption: a Journey into the Invisible Government, by Ferdinando Imposimato, one of Italy's most famous anti-corruption judges. The book alleges that an important corruption inquiry, focused on Mr Prodi, was effectively shut down by the Procura di Roma under pressure from the Italian Interior Ministry, which was then under Mr Prodi's control. The threats against the prosecutor, Giuseppa Geremia, are alleged to have taken the form of anonymous letters and telephone calls to her unlisted number. When she refused to back down, a package was hand-delivered to her home in Rome allegedly containing a knife and a photograph of her, a method of intimidation typical of the Mafia. The incidents came as her inquiry was reaching; climax ,late in 1996. Pressure was also put on Dr Geremia's superior, according to the book, which says he faced disciplinary charges if he did not agree to a transfer: "Organised crime has been getting a foothold throughout Italy, and my fear now is that it is going to spread to Europe under Prodi's management," he told The Daily Telegraph. During a parliamentary inquiry, Mr Imposimato allegedly discovered that Mr Prodi had allowed railway construction contracts to go to a company called Icla, which was widely thought (and has subsequently been shown) to be controlled by the Camorra, the Neapolitan Mafia. The project, known as the TAV. was a source of huge bribes for the political elite at a time when Mr Prodi was the official guarantor, a position that entailed fiduciary obligations under Italian law. (Daily Telegraph, November 20, 1999)
Romano Prodi, and president of the European Commission, was at the centre of political storm in Italy after it emerged he had been told three years ago of western intelligence reports that a big KGB spy ring existed inside the country. Mr Prodi, who was Italian Prime Minister from 1996 to 1998, said this week he had never been told about allegations that 261 Italians had been operating as spies for the Soviet Union for decades. However, the defence minister in Mr Prodi's government admitted he had informed him in general terms about allegations when they were passed to Rome by British intelligence in October 1996. Opposition politicians claim that Mr Prodi was reluctant to Act on the intelligence Information for Fear It Could Destabilise the Centre Left Coalition. Italian newspapers have recently suggested that the list of spies may include senior figures in the current government apparatus. (FT 9/10/99)
Romano Prodi, President of the European Commission, is to launch a legal fightback in an attempt to clear his name following publication of press reports and a book that raises questions about is past business dealings in Italy. (Daily Telegraph 14/12/99)