The plot against Renzi

Matteo Renzi is not doing well. In December, Italy's former Prime Minister lost an important referendum on the amendment to the Constitution – and has therefore resigned. Since then, a string of prominent figures have left their Partito Democratico to start their own business. His previously undisputed leadership within the PD is increasingly disputed. And now his father Tiziano has also turned out to be involved in a controversial corruption affair, in which he himself is also indirectly involved. All in all, enough to put an end to a hitherto impressive political career, you might say.

But luckily for Renzi things are not going so fast yet, especially because in the corruption case  the signs have now been considerably hung. Recent research has made it clear that father and son Renzi are not so much the subject of a spectacular legal-journalistic 'mistake', or one of those wonderful intrigues in which the Italian politics seems to have the patent.

Affair-Consip

The case known as the 'affair-Consip' has its origin in Naples. Consip is the central purchasing office of the Italian government, which issues public tenders for, among other things, the maintenance of government buildings, new construction, canteens, cleaning and so on. Last year, another such order was issued for a value of no less than 2,4 billion euros.

One of the candidates was the Neapolitan building baron Alfredo Romeo, who has become very wealthy from government contracts, but has often fallen by the wayside in recent years. To be sure of his case this time, Romeo paid a senior Consip official 100.000 euros in five years (which is not even that much for the real estate sector).

That man has now confessed, so that both himself and Romeo are now in prison. But in the course of the investigation of the Naples public prosecutor's office, much more came to light. Phone taps revealed that Romeo would also use the services of other informants, including Tiziano Renzi, the father of the then prime minister, who would have used his last name to put in a good word for Romeo at Consip. Both Renzi Sr. and Romeo denied ever meeting, but were contradicted by an overheard conversation from Romeo, in which he referred to 'the last time I met Renzi'.

Secret Service

But there was more. The police who led the investigation found in the garbage can of Romeo's company pizza to, Romeo's handwritten notes on things like "30.000 a month for T." (Tiziano, so) And while the police were busy with it  rummaging through Romeo's trash, they were uninterruptedly watched by 'clothed men' in a car parked nearby. This had to be members of the secret service who exercised control over the investigation of the police. And under whose authority do those secret services fall? Correct! Under the Prime Minister, or Renzi Jr., who would have used his authority to protect his father, and thus himself.

At least that's what it says in the investigative report, which is formally classified, but which, as so often in Italy, was cunningly leaked, in this case to Il Fatto Quotidiano, the most anti-Renzian newspaper in Italy, which for weeks made good appearances with revelations about the Consip affair.

Until a few weeks ago the court of Rome got involved because of the constant, and illegal, leakage. A closer examination of the tap reports also showed that the author of the investigation report, captain of the police Gianpaolo Scarfato, has a very large imagination. It thus became clear that the man who referred to his last meeting with Renzi was not Romeo but a politician friend of his, who was also not talking about Tiziano but about his son Matteo. And the so-called Secret Service agent was none other than Romeo's neighbor across the street, waiting for an acquaintance in his own car.

false trail

Captain Scarfato has since been suspended and refused to talk to the investigating judge. Renzi Sr. and Jr. have announced defamation charges. And all of Italy wonders who is actually behind the misdirection the false trail leading to the Renzi family. Is it Scarfato himself, ambitious but unintelligent, trying to make a name for himself with controversial, if not thoroughly checked, revelations? Or was the man in the service of people who wanted to blacken Renzi? And if so, who?

The most ingenious statement I heard last weekend from a journalist according to whom Scarfato had deliberately provided false information with the aim of being exposed and thereby discrediting any other investigation against Renzi et al. That is now a beautiful example of Italian dietrology, the almost manic need to find a sophisticated plot behind every political act. I do not believe in it. You can see from Captain Scarfato's head that the man is not shrewd enough for such a delicate game.

Anyway, Italian politics has added another mystery.