Oct 21- The Berlusconi Audios: "20 bottles of vodka"
Commentary, audio translations & an article by Jacopo Iacoboni
Berlusconi’s long-lasting love affair with Vladimir Putin
It’s an undeniable fact that Silvio Berlusconi, head of his own party, Forza Italia, is perhaps Vladimir Putin’s greatest ally in Europe, and ‘one of his five’ most trusted besties- Putin’s words, not mine.
Their relationship spans decades and has been very well-documented, right down to the tacky duvet gifted to Putin by Berlusconi, with their picture on it, that Putin keeps on a bed in his dacha.
What is less advertised is the extensive network of business relations between Berlusconi, his back channels in Moscow and Italy, and Putin’s oligarch network. After the Berlusconi audio translations, I’ve published, in full, an article by Jacopo Iacoboni, author of Oligarchi, that provides a stunning outline of these relations.
This is why I wasn’t surprised by Berlusconi’s views and sentiments in the audios leaked to La Repubblica and La7 news programme. I don’t think there was one Italian on the pennisula that was shocked—actually quite the opposite.
I was surprised by the fact that Berlusconi’s party and the Italian tv media were able to keep a lid on his love affair with Putin during the general election. There was only one instance, two days before September 25, when Berlusconi hinted at the real reasons for Putin’s attack on Ukraine, but it was quickly brushed aside like a pesky fly.
The leaked audios and timing of their release are probably part of an operation of sorts, but what exactly?
In terms of timing, Italian parliamentarians are working to elect and place their players in key ministries. Antonio Tajani, the Forza Italia ex-president of the EU parliament, was slated for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Maybe not so fast since he may have been one of those cheering widly in the audio as Berlusconi denigrated president Zelensky, pinning the current Russian war of aggression squarely on Zelensky’s shoulders. Did Meloni’s people leak the audio so that she and her network could place their choice in that ministry and others?
Or was it someone inside Forza Italia, tired of Berlusconi’s iron grip over the party, the direction of its policies, and eager to bring the boss down? The Forza Italia members who did not agree with his pro-Kremlin line left well before the general election. But the fact remains that Berlusconi runs the party like one of his businesses: there’s really no room for a difference of opinions or a change in policy if he remains at the helm.
Giorgia Meloni, slated as Italy’s next prime minister, put out a statement unequivocally denoucing Berlusconi’s pro-Russian stand in the war against Ukraine, but even that smells of hypocracy.
She was well aware of Berlusconi’s view and his relationship with Putin and his Russian network so why did she include Berlusconi’s party in the electoral coalition? We could ask the same about her decision to ally with her Matteo Salvini, head of the League, publically connected to Russia and Putin.
Unless she struck a deal with her partners on foreign policy before the election, she’s got two pro-Kremlin coalition members (and their MPs) actively rowing against her position. She may even have a security issue: how can her partners be trusted with sensitive intelligence? Would they pass on information to their friends in Moscow? It would certainly be my concern were I a leader of a European nation or in NATO.
Giorgia Meloni is a political animal: she probably realises that her future as prime minister must be acceptable to the EU: Italy cannot afford to be isolated. Italy’s economy is in dire need of EU funding. Besides this, the ECR, which she leads, sustains Ukraine’s defence without question. How she will balance her pro-Kremlin electoral base and partners at home with her foreign policy in Europe is a bit of a mystery.
More importantly, how will she keep the extensive pro-Kremlin network in Italy at bay? Unless she’s ready to de-Russify Italian institutions and media, I suspect the applauding crowd in the Berlusconi audios—just the tip of the iceberg—will be calling on her very soon.
For now, she’s received a call from President Mattarella, and will go to see him at 14,30 today.
Berlusconi audio no. 1…
On October 19, 2022, La Repubblica published an audio file of Berlusconi speaking to a group of people, whose identity is unknown. I would assume that they are members of Berlusconi’s party, Forza Italia, or a group of his close advisors. We have confirmation that MP Antonio Tajani, former president of the EU parliament, was present at the meeting.
What follows is my translation of the audio.
On several occasions, the Russian ministers said that we’re already at war with them.
Why? Because we give arms and financing to Ukraine.
I personally cannot express my opinion because if I do, then it will get to the press or others and a disaster would happen, but I’m very very very worried.
I have reconnected a little with president Putin, actually a lot, in the sense that for my birthday, he sent me 20 bottles of vodka and a very sweet letter. I responded with some bottles of Lambrusco and a letter that was just as sweet.
I was deemed by him the first among his five true friends.
Berlusconi audio no. 2…there’s more…
The second Berlusconi audio was first published the day after, October 20, on La 7 during its evening news programme, anchored by Enrico Mentana.
It’s even more shocking than the first, not because Berlusconi’s love affair with Putin wasn’t known to Italians, but because a former prime minister—a man with relationships at the highest level in Europe and the world—is clearly siding with Vladimir Putin, a genocidal dictator. Berlusconi displays a complete lack knowledge of documented historical events and morals.
"You know what happened with Russia's war? (asks for everything to remain confidential)
This is the story: in 2014, in Minsk, in Belarus, an accord was signed by Ukraine and the 2 newly constituted Donbas republics.A peace agreement so that the two wouldn't attack eachother. A year later, Ukraine throws the accord to into the fire and starts attacking the borders of the union. The two republics have military losses that amount to (I'm told) 5-6-7,000 casaulties.
Zelensky arrives, and he triples the attacks on the two republics. The dead [...]. Desperate, the two republics [...] send a delegation to Moscow [...] and finally get to talk with Putin. They say, "Vladimir, we don't know what to do, please defend us.
He [Putin] is contrary to any intervention. He resists. He's under great pressure from all of Russia. So, he decides to put together a special operation. The troops were supposed to enter Ukraine. Within a week, they were supposed to be in Kyiv, unseat the govt, Zelensky etc…
...and put in a govt that had already been chosen from a minority of good people with common sense in Ukraine. Then another week to go back to Russia. He entered Ukraine and he found a situation that he wasn't expecting and...
...he hadn't predicted the Ukrainian resistance, which had started receiving money and arms from the West. So instead of being a 2-week operation, the war has become a war of 200 plus years.
So this is the situation regarding the war in Ukraine.
I can't see how Putin and Zelensky can get to the (negotiating) table. There is no possible way.
Zelensky, in my view...never mind. I can't say it. (loud applause and cheering in the room)The war in Ukraine is a massacre of soldiers and citizens. If he (Zelensky) said, "I'm not going to attack anymore", everything would finish [...]. So if there's no strong intervention, this war won't end.
What's at risk, another danger, that we all have: today, unfortunately, in the Western world, there are no leaders. There are no leaders in Europe, in the United States.
I can't tell you what I know but there are no real leaders.You want to smile?
The ONLY real leader...is me..." (applause and cheering)
The Berlusconi-Putin connection: gas supplies, maxi contracts for Kremlin TV and former KGB agents- Jacopo Iacoboni- La Stampa
Gazprom, Russian TV, Yukos, Russian services—to understand the connection between Silvio Berlusconi and Vladimir Putin it is necessary to explore this network and its main strands, some still to be clarified in detail, but certainly every time the two have connected, an impressive series of alarm bells go off in diplomactic and international circles.
Firstly, on Gazprom and the resale of Russian gas in Europe (from Austria to Ukraine, passing through Italy) through layers of complex companies that outsourced part of the profits to Putin's personal friends.
Then, on the role of Berlusconi's men in the construction of the Kremlin state television and the network infrastructure of Russian television.
Thirdly, on Putin’s expropriation of Yukos, the oil giant of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and Italian companies that acquired pieces of it.
According to Catherine Belton, who wrote the seminal book on the subject in 2005 (when the Centrex case broke out, the alleged resale of Russian gas to friends of the Knight [Berlusconi]), "Putin's men were rebuilding relationships based on the connections forged so long ago, in the Soviet era, when Berlusconi had been one of the intermediaries who worked in close contact with the Soviet Politburo ».
Berlusconi has never denied Belton’s statements. The initial intent of these operations "was to create a platform from which Russia could seek to influence European politics," as Michel Seppe, a former Austrian intelligence chief, who had once worked closely with a KGB man, Andrey Akimov, revealed by Belton.
What happened in 2005?
Two of Putin's men, Andrey Akimov, and Alexander Medvedev, two financiers connected to the KGB, and at the head of Gazprombank and the export arm, Gazpromexport, began to create a series of foreign companies for the resale of gas, generating offshore funds that could be used to corrupt foreign entities.
In Berlin, Gazprom Germany is filled with former Stasi men. Same thing in Rosukrenergo (full of KGB and Stasi exes), the company that is allowed to resell excess Russian gas from Ukraine to Europe. In Vienna, the key man of the Akimov-Medvedev network is Martin Schlaff, a former Stasi agent who had worked in Dresden (like Putin).
In Italy, Akimov and his men set up a company, Centrex Central Energy Italian Gas Holding, with these shareholders: Centrex and Gas AG (head office in Vienna) held 41.6 percent; Zmb (a subsidiary of Kremlin-controlled Gazprom Export) held 25 percent, and Hexagon Prima and Hexagon Seconda, in Milano with the same address, held 33 percent. The president of these two Italian companies was Bruno Mentasti Granelli, former patron of San Pellegrino, and a great friend to Silvio Berlusconi, the Knight.
An Italian parliamentary commission took notice.
The Centrex agreement, signed before summer 2005 by Eni (Vittorio Mincato who did not want it was replaced with Paolo Scaroni, who is now set to become Minister of Energy in the Meloni government), was put on indefinite stand-by in October due to the findings of the Board of Directors and the Italian Antitrust Authority.
But the pattern was clear. The following year Scaroni renewed the Gazprom contract until 2035, at inconvenient and bloated prices, considering that in those years the potential of shale gas had emerged, and prices had fallen everywhere.
Italian parliamentarians, including Berlusconi's own party, complained to the US embassy. Three years later, in a cable unveiled by Wikileaks, the then American ambassador to Rome, Ronald Spogli, wrote that the true nature of relations between Berlusconi and Putin was "difficult to determine": "The Georgian ambassador in Rome told us that the the Georgia’s government believe that Putin has promised Berlusconi a percentage of the profits from any conduct developed by Gazprom in coordination with Eni ”.
The Knight [Berlusconi] has always denied all allegations, but the information also reached the European Parliament, through the Roman Kupchinsky report. The Americans complained that Berlusconi's Putinian statements weakened the Atlantic alliance, as well as the talks that were on-going for a common EU missile shield.
Antonio Fallico, who was awarded honorary Russian citizenship by Putin, is the head of the Russian Intesa Bank in Moscow, and one of the crucial men in various Kremlin influence operations in Italy - starting with a loan from Banca Intesa to Rosneft to finance a tranche of the fake “Privatization” of Igor Sechin's company. He said that already in the 1980s, Fininvest had won a very lucrative contract to broadcast prime time films on Soviet state television. How was that possible without being part of a Soviet network?
Lastly, another figure in the shadows, Angelo Codignoni, was the real right-hand man for Berlusconi at Putin’s court- this time linked to Russian TV and Yuri Kovalchuk. Last year the Pandora Papers leaks revealed that two million euros landed in one of Codignoni’s companies in Monte Carlo from Russia. But the mysterious consulting contracts, under investigation by the consortia of international reporters, are many- far, far more.