In the past few hours, the President of Rai, Monica Maggioni, declared that in the era of fake news it is necessary to look at the facts and not at the signals. And so, in the very intricate game being played in Viale Mazzini and its surroundings, let's see which facts seem to be more important and read the reliable news. There are two relevant facts so far: Paolo Messa resigned as a director of Rai and Raffaele Agrusti left his position as CFO and remained stand-by as Chairman of the listed Rai Way.
The first fact concerned the abandonment of the work of the last Board in open fiduciary conflict with the General Manager, Antonio Campo Dall'Orto, following the report presented to the Board where the very delicate and thorny issue of the 21 recently hired mega-managers was addressed. Having failed in the relationship of trust with the General Manager, Messa declared, yesterday he formally resigned as Director. This is precisely the dossier on which, as is known, Raffaele Cantone's ANAC has raised doubts about its legitimacy and which Cantone himself has declared to be his "greatest disappointment".
The issue, it has been observed, poses a serious threat to the future of the BoD as the Court of Auditors could detect, if proven, concrete risks of tax and reputational damage. While on the first the case law seems clear, on the second a little less. However, the young councilor Messa was among the first to raise the problem, in black and white, even before the Parliamentary Supervisory Commission on Rai without having concrete and exhaustive answers.
The second piece of news, which has not aroused the attention it deserves, concerns the resignation of the Rai financial director who, in truth, had already been around for a few weeks. Agrusti has agreed to go back to dealing with insurance, where he comes from and where yesterday he formally accepted to be the new CEO of Itass. The fact that he was disclosed right in the middle of the ongoing storm in Viale Mazzini adds further turbulence. In fact, the CFO is not only responsible for keeping Rai's accounts in order - which are good in any case - but he must also keep the investment and resource allocation plan under control.
It is known that, precisely in these hours, the question of the ceiling on the salaries of 240 thousand euros for both the executives and the artists hired by Viale Mazzini has come back into play and that a conflict with extremely dangerous potential is underway on this terrain. Last Rai's board of directors, among the many thorny points it dealt with, voted on the production plan, limiting it to September. As is known, in general, at the end of June, Rai Pubblicità presents the autumn-winter schedules to advertisers with the contracts already signed and instead, it seems, we are still a long way off. Important figures are at stake which could weigh heavily on the Company's economic future.
Furthermore, on the table of the CFO, the dossier of the renewal of the Service Contract is always open where, at the center, the issue of the accounting separation between the revenues from the license fee and those from advertising remains open and, consequently, with which money to finance the different types of programs.
Finally, Agrusti's resignation reopens another sensitive dossier: the pole of the towers. The CFO Rai represents the majority shareholder Rai in the listed Rai Way and who, it should be remembered, was renewed as Chairman of the Company on 28 April. And, in this regard, a completely new scenario opens up. In the corridors of Via Teulada, discontent winds its way and, as happens in places of entertainment, twists and turns cannot be excluded.
In fact, who could apply to fill such a delicate role which certainly is not and could not be only "representative"? It being understood that it will necessarily have to be the direct expression of the majority shareholder, there aren't many possible names and nobody excludes a possible return of the former CEO of Rai Way, Stefano Ciccotti.
