Bribes, red herrings to protect Descalzi: storm over Eni's lawyers

Manipulated judicial investigations, tamed State Council proceedings and false Eni dossiers. The joint operation between the Rome and Messina prosecutors led the Guardia di Finanza to make 15 arrests for two criminal associations dedicated to tax fraud, crimes against the public administration and corruption in judicial documents. Among those arrested also Giancarlo Longo, ex prosecutor of the Syracuse prosecutor's office, the lawyer Piero Amara and the entrepreneur Fabrizio Centofanti and Enzo Bigotti, the latter already involved in the Consip case. According to the allegations, the prosecutor would have made his judicial function available, in exchange for money, to help the clients of two Syracusan lawyers.

The prosecutors announced that the "investigations started from distinct investigative inputs converging on the operations of the two criminal associations, allowing the reconstruction of hypotheses of fraudulent bankruptcy by subjects not attributable to the structure of the organizations". The former prosecutor of Syracuse Giancarlo Longo, arrested today by the Finance, is accused of conspiracy, corruption and forgery. The magistrate for a few months has asked for the transfer to the court of Naples.

In particular, an accusation linked to the Eni case weighs against him: Longo, on the input of Amara, Eni's external lawyer, would in fact have launched an investigation, devoid of any foundation, into an alleged and revealed to be false plan to destabilize the company of the six-legged dog and his to Claudio Descalzi. In reality, for the investigators who also arrested Amara and Calafiore, the purpose would have been to hinder the investigation
Milanese on alleged Nigerian bribes in which Descalzi was involved.

In this regard, the GdF of Milan carried out searches against Massimo Mantovani, former head of Eni's legal office and current manager of the company, under investigation for conspiracy to commit a series of crimes. According to the investigation by prosecutor Laura Pedio, he would be the organizer of alleged misdirection maneuvers to influence the Milanese Eni-Nigeria and Eni-Algeria investigations.