Corrado Clini was arrested today by the Guardia di Finanza of Ferrara on charges of embezzlement. The former environment minister of the Monti government is now under house arrest, as is the entrepreneur Augusto Calore Pretner, involved in the same investigation.
According to the investigation by the Special Public Expenditure Unit and the Ferrara Command, Clini and Pretner would have diverted 3,4 million euros from a loan for the rehabilitation of water in Iraq. The project in question was called "New Eden" and provided resources for a total of 54 million euros, a sum raised with international support.
The investigations began with a flow of false invoices from a Dutch company in favor of a Ferrara engineering firm, Med Ingegneria Srl, a member of a consortium, Nature Iraq, in which Studio Galli Ingegneria Srl of Padua participated (of of which Pretner is a partner) and the Iraq Foundation, based in the United States, active in the "New Eden" project.
The misappropriation of the funds allegedly took place through a complex system of corporate and banking filters, thanks to payments made against false invoices issued by Dutch and Caribbean companies. The sums then flowed into accounts with Swiss credit institutions, directly referable to Clini and Pretner.
