News From Eurasia

Trisulti Monastery east of Rome, where Stephen Bannon maintains his gladiator school/"populist" academy in defense of the Judeo-Christian way of life in spite of being evicted five weeks ago, apparently. Photo by M. Williams/DW. 

This BuzzFeed story doesn't seem to be getting any play in the US—I heard it on BBC—but it involves hard evidence (Lordy, tapes!) of a meeting (reported in the news magazine L'Espresso in February) between Russian officials and representatives of Italian deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini's fascistoid Lega party at Moscow's Metropol Hotel in October. BuzzFeed has a recording of the meeting, in which participants develop a plot for the Kremlin to deliver $65,000,000 to the Lega in advance of last spring's European elections, violating Italy's campaign contribution law (which allowed foreign donors up until a new law this January, but only up to a maximum of €100,000) and evading European anti–money laundering and Know Your Client regulations:

The negotiation — which lasted for an hour and 15 minutes, interspersed with cigarette breaks and fueled by espressos — would involve a major Russian oil company selling at least 3 million metric tons of fuel over the course of a year to Italian oil company Eni for a value of around $1.5 billion. The buying and selling would be done through intermediaries, with the sellers applying a discounted rate to these transactions.

The discount would be worth around $65 million, based on fuel prices at the time, according to calculations provided to BuzzFeed News by industry analysts, and it is this money that would be secretly funneled to the Italian party via the intermediaries.

The participants were clear that the purpose of the deal and the discount mechanism at its heart was to support Lega, in particular its European election campaign.

“It’s very simple,” one of the two other Italian men said some 25 minutes into the meeting. “The planning made by our political guys was that given a 4% discount, 250,000 [metric tons] plus 250,000 per month per one year, they can sustain a campaign.”

There's no evidence as yet as to whether the plot was carried through, and Salvini has strenuously denied taking any Russian money, and the Russians on the tape have not been identified, but it seems clear that the meeting wasn't a sting (like the one Austria's hapless now former vice chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache fell for in May) and represents at the very least the kind of collusion-falling-into-conspiracy that exists between the Russian government and the most important link in the chain of anti-immigrant rightwing parties it backs in Europe; as Salvini's right-hand man Gianluca Savoini told the meeting, by way of introduction:

A new Europe has to be close to Russia as before because we want to have our sovereignty. We want to really decide for our future, Italians, for our children, for our sons. Not depending on decision of illuminates [the enlightened] of Brussels, of USA. We want to decide. Salvini is the first man that want to change all Europe. Together our allies and colleagues and other parties in Europe. Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs in Austria, German Alternative für Deutschland, France Madame Le Pen, and other other countries the same, Hungaria with Orban, in Sweden Sverigedemokraterna. We have our allies. We really want to begin to have a great alliance with these parties that are pro Russia, but not pro Russia for Russia but for our countries. Because to stay well with Russia, good relations is for our countries.

(This is a not quite professional translation from the Italian, by somebody who didn't recognize the (jokey) reference to the Illuminati. "As before" in the first line would be better rendered as "the way it used to be".)

An interesting sidelight is the evident kibbitzing presence around the negotiations (not at the meeting) of Putin's unofficial state philosopher, the "Eurasianist" Aleksandr Dugin, a known influence on American Nazioids Richard Spencer and his acolyte Stephen Miller, and Stephen Bannon:

Savoini can be heard telling his colleagues that he was the “total connection” between the Italian and Russian sides, and that the other Italians were his partners. He said he’d been told this by “Aleksandr” — a possible reference to Aleksandr Dugin, a high-profile Russian far-right ideologue and political analyst, with whom Savoini had been photographed the previous day.

Small world.