The outgoing director of the Sole 24 Ore Roberto Napoletano leaves the leadership of the newspaper and is placed on unpaid leave for six months. The ad interim direction of the economic newspaper passes to the editorialist Guido Gentili, who had already been director from 2001 to 2004 in partnership with Napoletano himself (at the time deputy director) at the behest of the president of Confindustria at the time, Antonio D'Amato, and of the director general, Stefano Parisi, who wanted to transform a newspaper of great authority and diffusion and of very high profitability into the house organ of the industrial organization and support of the Berlusconi government.
This is the decision issued by the extraordinary board of directors of Il Sole 24 Ore which met urgently after the offensive by the judiciary which has among the suspects Napoletano for false corporate communications and 9 managers for embezzlement and after the all-out strike by journalists who demanded the removal of Napoletano.
It is probable that the editorial staff will now suspend the all-out strike against Napoletano and that the paper will be back on newsstands on Wednesday morning.
Gentili's interim should not last long. Three candidates are on track for the definitive direction of Il Sole: the former director of Corriere della Sera, Ferruccio de Bortoli, who already replaced Gentili at the helm of Il Sole in 2005, the deputy director of Ansa, Fabio Tamburini and the director of Il Foglio, Claudius Cerasa.
