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In recent weeks, new accusations – and new developments on old accusations – have emerged against the president of the Lombardy region, Attilio Fontana, who since July has been involved in a court and media case surrounding a party of dresses ordered by the region to his wife’s company, which added to the criticism of the handling of the coronavirus pandemic. The journalistic inquiries were carried out by the press and by some television broadcasts, especially among them Report, which dedicated its last episode to the cases that arose around Fontana. None of these cases have had significant legal consequences thus far, but they will likely continue to unfold and speak out in the coming months.
The history of dresses, with the latest news
On April 16, in the midst of the coronavirus emergency, the Lombardia Aria shopping center assigned a supply of gowns and other protective devices to Dama SpA, a company that produces the Paul & Shark clothing brand owned by Andrea Dini and, for the 10 percent, by Roberta Dini, Andrea’s sister and Fontana’s wife. The supply has meant a total of 82 thousand pieces for a value of 513 thousand euros. The regional authorities never raised the conflict of interest.
On May 20, more than a month after the supply was released, Dini wrote an email to Aria’s manager, explaining that she had decided to transform the sale into a donation. Interviewed in July by Report, Dini explained that the sale of the dresses to the region had been decided at a time when he was not in the company. and that upon his return he had immediately decided to cancel everything because she had always wanted to say that she wanted to donate those dresses. Actually, it appears that Dini only moved after Fontana received a series of generic questions about Report on the supply of protection devices required to individuals. In a series of statements, Fontana said he only found out about the matter through the newspapers in June.
In recent weeks, however, Fontana’s role in the whole affair has emerged more clearly. At the end of September, the Milan prosecutor’s office, which asked to seize the phones of Andrea and Roberta Dini, among others, argued that Fontana’s involvement had been “generalized.” The main proof of this thesis is that on May 19, the day before Dini wrote to Aria saying that she wanted to convert the sale into a donation, Fontana tried to make a transfer of 250,000 euros from her personal account in Switzerland to Dama SpA, in what according to the magistrates was an attempt to compensate Dini for the loss of income that he would have found by canceling the sale of the dresses. The transfer was blocked by Fontana’s bank, which deemed it suspicious and reported it to the competent authorities – which are currently investigating the whole matter – thus triggering the second best-known case linked to Fontana.
The Swiss account
To compensate Dini, Fontana sent a transfer from an account whose existence was unknown, which was then rebuilt in the following weeks by the newspapers. It all started in 1997 when Fontana’s mother, former dentist Maria Giovanna Brunella, then 74, opened an account for about 5 million euros in the Bahamas, leaving power – that is, management – to her son , who had been mayor for two years. of Induno Olona, in the province of Varese. The origin of that money has never been clarified, and Fontana himself declared that he knew nothing: shortly after the news of the transfer, Dini was asked about the invoice, he said Republic that “it had not been operational for decades, I think at least since the mid-1980s.”
This is not exactly the case. In 2005, he rebuilt tomorrow, the account was transferred to another deposit always linked to a trust based in the Bahamas, in the name of Brunella and with Fontana indicated as the beneficial heir. In the following years there were large movements of money: deposits for 129 thousand euros in 2010, withdrawals for around 530 thousand in 2011, deposits for 400 thousand the following year, again according to the reconstruction of tomorrow. Movements that contradict the version according to which the account was not operational, and that raised doubts about the possibility that Fontana’s mother, then in her 90s, really personally managed her son’s account.
In 2015 Fontana regularized that money taking advantage of an amnesty to bring back hidden foreign capital to the tax authorities without penalties with a voluntary declaration. However, they were not returned to Italy but to an account in Switzerland, where they are still deposited today. Fontana’s early statements are even more surreal in light of recent research by tomorrow according to which it was Fontana himself who paid fines to the Tax Agency for the regularization of the mother’s accounts, for a total of 121 thousand euros.
The fact that the fines were imposed on Fontana suggests that he was actively involved in managing the money. “From the documents read,” he said. tomorrow attorney and tax expert Sebastiano Stufano, “there is reasonable certainty that he was delegated to operate on his mother’s checking account.”
Consultations for your daughter
In the last days either Republic to be Report they discussed another possible conflict of interest that could involve Fontana. From some internal documents of the Lombardy Region, it is clear that since 2015 Fontana’s eldest daughter, María Cristina Fontana, a lawyer who took over her father’s Fontana firm, has collaborated with some Lombard health companies for brief legal consultations . Between 2015 and 2017, when the Region was already governed by the Lega but not by Fontana, it had obtained six.
After the appointment of his father, the collaboration has intensified: the consultations have become 5 in 2018 and 3 in 2019, to which was added another legal advice for the Sacco hospital in Milan. Also in this case, the potential conflict of interest was not reported, and in fact for the inquiries obtained in 2019 the documents indicate that María Cristina Fontana has no conflict of interest in the place. It is unclear if there are currently ongoing investigations into these contracts.
Two events during his tenure as mayor of Varese
Lately Report Two other stories of potential conflicts of interest occurred to him, instead dating back to Fontana’s tenure as mayor of Varese, between 2006 and 2016.
The first refers to María Cristina Fontana again. According to documents found by Report, in 2012 he inherited from his family an area of about 4,000 square meters in the south of the city, adjacent to a villa. The area was entered in the land registry as an exclusively green area, on which no other structures could be built. In 2013, however, the following year, the majority of the city council voted to change the intended use of the land, making it buildable: according to Report the modification multiplied the value of real estate tenfold. At the time of the council vote, Fontana was present in the classroom and voted to change the intended use, reporting no conflicts of interest or abstaining from voting. An opposition amendment proposing to annul the measure was rejected, even with the vote of Fontana himself.
When Attilio was mayor of Varese #Fontana he voted to change the use of his daughter’s land, multiplying its value. #Report pic.twitter.com/ms0fKsTBZL
– Report (@ reportrai3) October 19, 2020
Another story concerns a free concession from 2014 to 2018 for the use of a piece of land located in the middle of the city’s racecourse, guaranteed by the company that manages the plant. The beneficiary company of the concession was the Pony Club le Bettole, an association run by two sisters. One of them is Laura Ferrari: the wife of Giancarlo Giorgetti, one of the main leaders of the Lega, a party of which Attilio Fontana has been a member for many years.
From 2014 to 2018, the Pony Club le Bettole mined the land in the center of the racecourse to maintain a horse stable, where it organized courses and other paid events, without paying rent. The concession ended in 2018, when during a control it was discovered that the association did not have any authorization.
Even the concession itself actually seems controversial: in 2008 Ferrari negotiated a fraud conviction for having obtained 750 thousand euros from the Lombardy region to organize horse riding courses, which it never actually took. At that time, the lawyer who defended her was Attilio Fontana. Interviewed by Report, Giancarlo Giorgetti replied that the concession was totally regular, but without giving more details.
Relations with Nino Caianiello
Much of the latest episode of Report focused on the relationships Fontana had with Nino Caianiello, a powerful local Forza Italia politician, who, interviewed by Report he admitted that he had taken bribes for years, which he calls necessary “contributions” to the life of the party, in exchange for public and private favors.
In the past Fontana had already admitted to having frequented Caianiello, but according to an interception of a telephone call between Caianiello and Fontana disseminated by Report, his influence would also extend to the appointment of the Lombard regional council. “You saw that I followed most of your advice,” Fontana told Caianiello shortly after the board was formed, according to the interception.
A ReportCaianiello said that he pressed especially for the appointments of Raffaele Cattaneo – a former regional transport councilor who is part of the powerful Catholic Communion and Liberation group – and Giulio Gallera, the current Lombardy Councilor for Welfare, highly criticized for the management of the pandemic of coronavirus. According to the reconstruction of ReportCaianiello was also in contact with some families representing the ‘Ndrangheta in Lombardy, whom during the interview he admitted to having approached to obtain votes.
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