The case centred on a meeting at Moscow’s Metropol hotel in October 2018 in which the three Italians and three Russian intermediaries allegedly discussed siphoning off 65 million euros from the profits of an oil sale transaction and diverting the money to the League.
In April a Milan judge upheld a request from prosecutors to shelve an investigation into alleged negotiations.
The Italians who took part in the meeting were Gianluca Savoini, the former spokesman of League leader and Transport and Infrastructure Minister Matteo Salvini, the head of the Lombardy-Russia association, lawyer Gianluca Meranda and former banker Francesco Vannucci.
According to reports by La Verità, the case was engineered to make the League and Salvini look bad ahead of the 2019 European elections.
It reported that the audio recording of the meeting was made by Meranda, who allegedly then handed it over to Giovanni Tizian, the journalist who broke the story of the meeting for weekly magazine L’Espresso.
The daily reported that Meranda and Tizian are friends.
It also reported that Savoini and Tizian met an official from Russia’s FSB security agency, the successor to the KGB, in Moscow.
“The scheming against the League organised at the Metropol became a club to hit one of Italy’s main parties with before the last European elections,” League sources said.
“The revelations from La Verità are becoming increasingly serious and disconcerting.
“It is more necessary than ever for Copasir to intervene”.
ANSA
