Prime Minister Conte, despite being a talented jurist, does not know that swapping a vote is a crime. In fact yesterday, during the heated discussion on the decree to repay savers defrauded by banks, he clearly stated that the ministers concerned had to take into account the very high weight that the measure could have in electoral terms. In short, public money should be used casually to obtain in exchange the votes of those who will receive these reimbursements and their families.
But Minister Tria was not impressed and no decision was taken. The question is really tangled: everyone has a pinch of right but also the wrongs are equally shared, so no practicable way to close the issue can be found.
Everything starts with promises made during the electoral campaign by the two ruling parties, to fully reimburse all the holders of bonds and shares of the failed banks both in the Umbria-Tuscany and in the Veneto regions. But from Brussels it was pointed out that the refund should have been examined case by case by a special commission in order to be able to distinguish those who have actually suffered a scam from those who were well aware of the risk they ran, but made those purchases anyway of bonds or stocks hoping to make a good income out of it. And on the other hand, the money that the State uses for these reimbursements is the money of all Italians and therefore, rightly so, the European Commission seeks to safeguard a principle of fairness and justice. Principles that evidently do not touch the mind of Di Maio, Salvini or Conte, for which State money is not the money of all Italians which must be administered with prudence, but nobody's money which can therefore be used for the electoral convenience of their parties.
The EU basically says that savers can only be reimbursed if they prove they have been defrauded, with the sole exception of small savers who have an income of less than 35 euros and invested assets of less than 100 euros. And to prove it they have to go to a court or to the special commission made up of "independent" persons set up at the Treasury Ministry. But this is not good at Di Maio who would like everyone to be reimbursed without too many checks their rights and financial situation. Salvini which has its own electoral base in Veneto, is basically in agreement, even if he seems more committed to finding a practical solution which allows the procedures for repayments to be started, at least for the vast majority of small savers.
In essence it is true that a fraudulent practice was in place in some banks which saddled savers with risky securities without giving adequate information, or worse, loans were given to customers in exchange for the purchase of shares in the bank itself in order to support its prices, but it is also true that bondholders have already been repaid to a large extent and that for those who owned shares, in the case of the Venetians there has already been an offer of 9 euros per share which is about 15% of the latest stock market prices. If one examines the performance of the shares of other listed banks, one can see that during the crisis the old shareholders saw the value of their shares decrease by at least 80-90%, i.e. more or less what the shareholders of the failed banks lost. So what is the state to do? Repay all those who owned bank shares before the outbreak of the great crisis of 2008? The situation is a little different but substantially the same also for those who owned bonds. And then it is obvious that the State can only intervene if it has been proven to be a fraud given that the scammers do not have the capital capacity to compensate the victims and considering that the banking crisis has exploded also due to a somewhat hasty application of the new rules on "bail in" which came into force without having adequately informed savers.
But be careful it is always about public money and therefore we need a lot of prudence and perfect transparency before forcing millions of taxpayers to pay their money to 200 savers. Otherwise, even in political terms, to take up Conte's concept, it is said that the votes that are "buy" compensate for those that are lost on the side of angry taxpayers.
