Minister Federica Guidi has resigned, brought down by a wiretap in which, speaking with her partner Gianluca Gemelli, she assured him that an amendment to the Stability Law that served his private interests and those of his oil industry friends would be approved.
It was already known that the old lobbying arms of the oil industry had infiltrated, here and there, the old Ministry of Industry — later renamed the Ministry of Economic Development. One glaring piece of evidence was the insertion, in 1992, of the small phrase "and equivalent" into the renewables incentive scheme (Cip6), which siphoned billions — first in lire, then in euros — towards refineries rather than towards solar and wind installations.
So be it. That was twenty years ago. All the more reason, then, why the fact that today, with the wind blowing so strongly in the direction of 2020, of the EU's highly ambitious renewables targets, of the Paris Agreement, the person at the very top of that ministry should be someone so beholden to the wishes of the oil lobby, is surprising. Disappointing. Disheartening.
What is not surprising, not disappointing, and is in fact heartening, is that Minister Guidi was forced to resign over the wiretap in which she had promised her partner: "Tomorrow the amendment goes through."
The minister had been wiretapped while, on the phone with her partner, she undertook to guarantee an amendment to the Stability Law that was favourable to her partner's private economic interests in the field of oil extraction. The wiretap also reportedly implicates Minister Maria Elena Boschi: "Maria Elena is on board too."
The storm of controversy this evening forced Guidi to write to Matteo Renzi to tender her resignation from her government post.
The transcript of the phone call in the records of the Potenza magistracy's investigation into the disposal of waste linked to oil extraction proved fatal.
It all began with an investigation by the Potenza public prosecutor's office into waste management at the Eni facility. The investigation gave rise to a strand concerning the Tempa Rossa plant in the Val d'Agri. Within this strand, Gemelli is under investigation, accused of illicit influence-peddling precisely because of his relations with the minister.
The businessman was keenly interested in unblocking an operation managed by Total, because, according to the prosecution, his companies stood to gain around two and a half million euros in subcontracts. This is what he discusses on the phone with his partner, the minister, who on 13 December reassured him:
"We should be able to get it into the Senate if… Maria Elena is on board too… that amendment they had me pull that night. At four in the morning… Put it back into the law… with the amendment to the stability law and at that point if we also manage to unblock Tempa Rossa… then… everything moves on the other side!"
From the investigations subsequently carried out by the mobile squad of the Potenza Police, it emerged that the amendment had been inserted into the omnibus amendment to the 2015 Stability Law, as modified by the Senate on 20 December, which gave the green light to the Tempa Rossa project and to work on the Total oil processing facility at Corleto Perticara (Potenza), in which Gemelli himself had a stake as head of two companies in the oil sector. The businessman asked his partner (the minister) whether the matter also concerned "Total's friends, clients of Tecnimont," and Guidi replied: "Well of course, do you understand?.. of course, that's exactly why I told you!"
The preliminary investigating judge, commenting on the wiretaps concerning the withdrawn amendment, notes: "Since it had not been possible to insert it into the text of the 'Sblocca Italia' decree, the Government (on the initiative of Minister Guidi with the agreement of Minister Boschi) had essentially reintroduced it into the text of the Stability Law bill ('Put it back into the law… with the amendment to the stability law'), which ended up being approved, together with the Stability Law, at the end of December 2014. The new attempt at insertion was indeed successful."