Il cabinet approved in the night a gaunt law decree with immediate effect that allows the rescue with public money of the Banca Popolare di Bari, commissioned in recent days by the Bank of Italy for serious financial losses. It is an act that reassures account holders, savers and employees, avoiding bank runs at the reopening of the bank today, but that unleashes furious controversy inside and outside the government.
The saving will take place through the financing of 900 million from Invitalia, company of Tesoro who will use his Central Mediocredito to enter the capital of banks in difficulty starting with Popolare di Bari.
The Five Stars, which in the last legislature have constantly attacked the Renzi government for having saved the numerous banks - at least 7 - which have entered into crisis, have tried to save face proposing an impossible nationalization della Popolare di Bari and yours transformation into an investment bank for the South. But the Renzians, with minister Teresa Bellanova who, being from Puglia, knows the state of the Popolare di Bari very well, pressed them throughout the meeting of the Council of Ministers: "Why don't you say clearly - asked Bellanova - that we are simply saving a bank? We write save and don't raise in the text. Also because we are talking about a simple commercial bank and not about an investment bank for the South, which among other things is contrary to EU rules".
The Renzians also insist on making the rescue of the Popolare di Bari subordinate to his own transformation into a spa both to make it contestable and to apply the reform of cooperative banks desired and approved at the time by the Renzi government but never implemented by the Apulian bank.
The controversies of the Five Stars and Italia Viva also affect the Bank of Italy, who pushed Popolare di Bari to acquire Tercas, which is at the root of many troubles for the Apulian bank, because the European Commission, with a controversial decision and then disavowed by the Court of Justice, theprevented the Interbank Fund from intervening in bank deposits to lend a hand to Popolare di Bari, incredibly seeing in it a sort of state aid despite the capital being private.
The Five Stars ask to know the results of all the inspections by the Bank of Italy at the Popolare di Bari and the Renzians want information on the Tercas operation. Today the echo of the controversies that split the Government and which also affect the Bank of Italy will certainly resound in the Senate hall, where - on the occasion of the final vote on the budget maneuver - the former prime minister Matteo Renzi has already signed up to speak.
To know more, Bank of Italy document which traces all the interventions of the Supervisory Authority on Banca Popolare di Bari.
