But “State Secret” can mean “Bribes”? (Question to the Prosecutor's Office)
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”?
