Of Maurizio Blondet
Since the Benettons do not supply the State with missiles, advanced armaments, radar – because the motorway concessions were covered by state secrecy? It's a question I would like to ask, as a poor citizen, to judges, prosecutors: what other reason can they imagine for this state secret! – if not hidden exchanges and benefits between the politicians who granted them, and those who enjoy the concession of a very profitable monopoly? I ask sincerely: because I can't imagine anything else. Maybe judges and prosecutors, but yes. They have a reason to find this secret very normal. And for this reason they have not moved despite the fact that the Transport Authority has also repeatedly underlined the need to make these contracts public, that concern a public service and public power. And although in any other country the Ministry of Transport makes the contracts and documents governing the relationship between the State and the managers of the motorway networks available for consultation, as - after all - of any public service granted under concession.

Bribes can be assumed? Under-the-table payments in any form to the concessionaire government party? This is asked naively, given the enormous profits that the company in question derives from the management of the monopoly: almost the 26 percent of turnover net profit, you seem to 1,042 billion . And a gross operating margin that makes the economic journalist Fabio Dragoni say the following dirty joke: “An EBITDA of almost 68% on turnover like that of #Highways credo can only be overcome by drug trafficking". And why Mario Giordano calls them “Vultures”?

I don't know if he's right, I don't understand. But there is another article on Economic scenarios, which I leave the reading to the experts, which makes a comparison between Autostrade Spa and ANAS and concludes: “In the face of greater toll collection, Autostrade per l'Italia has reduced the investment in new asphalt surface between 2016 and the 2017, decline which becomes of 36% when compared with the 2000. If you hit potholes you know who to get angry at. (…)
“Even if we doubled ANAS expenses per km of road we would still have much less expensive management of the motorway system. (….) Practically, public management would cost half as much as management by the monopolist concessionaire, even assuming a doubling of public costs per km“.
https://scenarieconomici.it/quanto-super-guadagna-autostrade-per-litalia-rispetto-alla-gestione-anas-leggete-e-divertitevi/
In short, the Benettons increased profits and decreased investments. The company has decreased its investments -26% dal 2016 al 2017.
I ask: Is there any reason why private individuals are made to pocket profits of a billion a year as part of a concession whose terms are secret?? To a company that doesn't even pay taxes in Italy, having its headquarters in Luxembourg? This question has some relation to the fact that the minister of infrastructure of the PD government, Graziano Delrio,extended the very lucrative concession to Benetton and Gavio (other manager) until 2030, just before it expires?

Maybe there’s a do-out-des. Maybe a party secretary privatizes, and immediately emerged as a racing sailor, yacht owner. Or someone else manages to buy a villa by writing checks from 400 thousand euros like it was nothing. I'm not stating that, I ask: c'è un do ut des?
For example: Enrico Letta, who as Prime Minister was the assignee of the Atlantia concession, as soon as he lapses from office, he was made a board member of the Spanish company Abertis: which is controlled by Atlantia: Nothing bad, brave prosecutors. But you can see a do-ut-des here?
I don't know, I ask. Prosecutors are not interested in "opening the file"? Come i 400 who opened against Berlusconi? So zealous in “hunting down the 46 millions of the League", they cannot take a look at the immense Benetton profits that the party in power has given them?

Surely the State - you magistrates hypothesize - will have given the secret concession to the Benettons for their specialized professionalism in the sector. Even if you have to ask where on earth they acquired this professionalism, in their previous profession as rag-pickers, they invented a method of coloring t-shirts.

Buy without spending a penny

Perhaps, you will say, the decisive factor that guided D'Alema in '99 to grant them that lucrative monopoly, it was their immense availability of capital: they need it, to detect i 3 thousand kilometers of motorways. They will have paid on the nail, how do you say, thousands of billions of lire. Of them. Great capitalists as they are.
But here's a trader, Giovanni Zibordi, nega. “It should be remembered that the Benettons bought Autostrade without practically spending any of their own money, because they bought it through a company ad hoc who took on debt to pay for the purchase and then merged it with Autostrade, thus transferring the debt to Autostrade themselves...".
Right, this is called Leveraged buy-out, vin fashion,It's perfectly legal – although I don't understand why, given that it allows a capitalist without his own capital to buy very large companies, paying for them by looting the acquired businesses. It should not be legal especially when it comes to state-owned enterprises and natural monopolies: because then we would all be able to compete by doing the same. Italy is full of capitalists without capital, who in collusion with the government "buy" huge treasures in this way: Colaninno himself did it, who bought Telecom without his own money, then paying for it with Telecom's profits. Since even us naive people would be good at being a capitalist like this, at least we would like such a concession to be auctioned, free and open. And that, without wanting to twist the knife in the wound, pointing out how this way, capitalists do not advance the Italian industrial system, but they impoverish and plunder it, causing it to lose value. This is even more true for the Benettons, that the billionaire profits made in Italy, they spent it to buy highways in Chile, land in Argentina and elsewhere?
Prima, when the highways were IRI, they reinvested the profits in maintenance, network expansions and modernizations: as should be morally required when managing a public interest monopoly. Or even, reduce service prices,because this is what public monopoly is for: fulfill the institutional obligation, for the State, to provide the service to the entire national community at same conditions”.

The State has carried out privatizations at a loss!?

Instead D'Alema, Study Program, Amato, those of privatizations, they failed in this duty, selling to private individuals whose aim was never to improve the service, but obtain more profits - precisely by reducing maintenance "costs"., first of all.
But they did privatizations, it was said, because the State collected money in this way, with which he had to reduce the public debt.
Ora, Mr. Prosecutor, here is a headline from Repubblica - a "friendly" newspaper - of 2017:
“The rush to privatize has cost the state 40 billion”.

I thought it was a printing error: actually, they wanted to write that “the race for privatisation he made to the State 40 billion”; not that it "cost" 40 billion.
But that's exactly how it went, and the text says so: “If the Treasury had kept in its portfolio all the main companies that it placed on Piazza Affari” he says – “today it would find itself in its pocket 40 billions more”. That's a nice amount 40 billion, prosecutor: into the state coffers, what has been missing for years and what is necessary - according to Savona and Bagnai - to launch a major work plan on infrastructure and the re-equipping of the territory, abandoned by the PD to private rentiers : in exchange for what? It's a question. State Secrecy prevents the answer from being known?

I understand prosecutor Cozzi: “It wasn't an accident, it was a human error". Human error, it's a delicate tocode. Maybe it would give rise to the feeling of wanting to throw everything on the shoulders of the engineer Morando who made a mistake, and lock it there with the dead man. But it certainly won't be like that. It must be understood, the brave prosecutor: you could see the concern on his face. A nuisance that takes resources away from the "hunt for the League's millions". A big problem to solve. With names of untouchables to touch, so we would need a Di Pietro again capable of throwing them in prison to make them confess. Something in his face tells us that prosecutor Cozzi will not be the Di Pietro who opens the Mani Pulite of the PD . But we could be wrong: after all, it is that of Genoa and is the prosecutor's office that hunts down criminals everywhere in the world 46 millions of the League. She is also the one who will tell us the truth about why the Siena Prosecutor's Office dismissed this as a suicide:

We are calm. Our questions will be answered.
Source: https://www.maurizioblondet.it/?email_id=1948&user_id=13803&urlpassed=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubWF1cml6aW9ibG9uZGV0Lml0L21hLXNlZ3JldG8tZGktc3RhdG8tcHVvLXZvbGVyLWRpcmUtdGFuZ2VudGktZG9tYW5kYS1hbGxhLXByb2N1cmEv&controller=stats&action=analyse&wysija-page=1&wysijap=subscriptions