That the chair of the managing director of Eni, Claudio Descalzi, ballasted by the long collection of judicial vicissitudes, wobbles is nothing new, but yesterday a new pickaxe came from a leading exponent of the Government, such as the Deputy Minister of Economic Development, Stefano Buffagni of the Five Stars.
“In my opinion, something needs to change in Eni, I've always had some reflections on the board. There will be the necessary times in which to think about this issue, but if there are all these judicial investigations, everything is not going to be perfect, evidently".
Buffagni's reference concerns the new judicial shingle that has fallen on the CEO of Eni, under investigation by the Milan prosecutor's office for failure to declare a conflict of interest for business conducted by a company of his wife Maria Magdalena Ingobo, in turn under investigation for international corruption for alleged bribes on an oil field in the Congo. According to the Milan Public Prosecutor's Office, writes La Repubblica this morning, there would be approximately 300 million dollars in orders assigned by ENI to the galaxy of companies attributable to Ingobo without informing the corporate bodies.
The latest investigations follow those for alleged bribes on Eni fields in Algeria and Nigeria, on which Descalzi has always professed - as for the Congo - his complete extraneousness.
But in addition to the investigations into operations in Africa, it should also be remembered that Eni has been called into question for Moscopoli and that the headquarters of the oil group were raided to clarify relations with third-party companies as part of the deal with the Russians which was to guarantee 65 million to the League.
Faced with the rain of judicial investigations, which naturally in themselves do not amount to any proof of guilt until the proceedings are concluded, the deputy minister was asked if he does not believe that Descalzi should cautiously take a step back from the top of ENI. Here is the response of the deputy minister: “It is not my job to judge what a manager who is currently innocent until proven guilty should do. I'm not the judge. We are interested in understanding what Eni's development plan is in the face of an epochal change in the world”.
But in April Descalzi's mandate at the head of ENI expires and the government seems to be preparing the cleanup.
