Dear Director, “Charlie” state of alert in our intelligence (Dis, Aise and Aisi). A sort of “Spectre alla ‘nduja” is taking shape, half Calabrian and half Roman whose movements have put managers and mandarins of think tanks linked to the Farnesina in turmoil. The epicenter of the earthquake appears to be the Med-Or foundation, with the mission of promoting relations in the Mediterranean area, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle and Far East.
Strongly desired, in 2021, by the then CEO of Leonardo Spa Alessandro Profumo, Med-Or was entrusted to the leadership of Marco Minniti, former undersecretary with responsibility for security and Minister of the Interior, defined as the “Lord of the Spies” by the New York Times, who resigned from the House to take up the prestigious post. And it matters little that Leonardo already had another foundation presided over by Luciano Violante who, in turn, after having been a “little Vyshinsky” and everything, is creating his own foundation which will certainly have its work cut out for it, given that he is one of the left-wing “boys” of this right-wing government.
The rumors filtering through Chigi indicate that the undersecretary to the Prime Minister, Alfredo Mantovano, is committed to expanding Minniti’s ambitions, proud of having reopened relations with the Emirates and the Israelis. To comply with international standards, we are considering the entry into Med-Or of public partners such as Eni, Enel, Ferrovie, Poste Italiane, Terna and Fincantieri, ready to finance the new ambitions of the foundation to ingratiate themselves with Super Giorgia. The scope of action will be expanded to Latin America and other geographical areas where the new members have strategic interests. In the meantime, in secret meetings with representatives of the future members, chaired by the head of the Cabinet for relations with the Services, Alessandro Monteduro, a very pious and clever man from Lecce, the future governance is being defined. In practice, we want to make Med-Or a strategic node where the needs of companies, rich in sensitive data and information, and those of our intelligence agencies can converge. A prospect that makes the DIS, which coordinates the activities of the Services, and many “mandarins” worried about the excessive power that would be placed in the hands of Marco Minniti, in a cold sweat. Not that Minniti is new to foundations. Together with Francesco Cossiga and General Leonardo Tricarico, he created ICSA, a foundation that deals with strategic analysis and intelligence culture, which cares little about Roman controversies and, indeed, wallows in it like a mouse in cheese.
The Med-Or board of directors is crowded with ten directors, including lawyers, relatives of parliamentarians seeking relocation, former fake beards, promising Leonardo executives, up to the most lucid right-wing intellectual Pietrangelo Buttafuoco. Even more crowded, like an “all you can eat” restaurant, is the International Board, which has thirty-two councillors, including a pharaoh of private healthcare, Kamel Ghribi, who has been running for years as the future president of Tunisia, a deputy German Chancellor, former foreign ministers, Saudi princes and African politicians. It ends ad abundantiam with a scientific committee of forty professors, if they wanted they could open their own university!
Many had taken Med-Or lightly, but when it became clear that Minniti was in fact creating a parallel instrument of diplomacy, some began to speak of the foundation as “a second leg of the foreign policy of the Italian system”. Hypothesis that makes Claudio Descalzi CEO of Eni shudder, and also worries the Farnesina, ASPI and ISPI quite a bit. The world of foundations has always been fertile ground for the gathering of information between companies and secret services: who, therefore, better than Minniti, could manage this ambitious project? For now there is a lot of fog over the foundation’s work, and it will certainly not be a coincidence that Meloni’s Mattei Plan was presented right at the Med-Or headquarters, on the occasion of “Med-Or Day” last July.
Tanned, smiling, elegant, Minniti is often on television. As he speaks, all he seems to be missing is Solomon the cat to pet, like in the 007 film “You Only Live Twice”. But Minniti has had more than two lives so far. After a career on the left, from the PCI to the DS to the PD, he grew up under the wing of Massimo D’Alema, in 2007 he abandoned him to move to the court of Walter Veltroni. Confirming Andreotti’s old saying that “gratitude is the feeling of the eve”, before becoming Minister of the Interior in 2016 with Paolo Gentiloni, in two governments, of Enrico Letta and Matteo Renzi, he held the role of undersecretary with delegation to the Services and aerospace, infuriating the minister of the time Ortensio Zecchino. Its antechambers were always temples where terror reigned and its door opened only to those who had passed the rigorous checkpoints. And it is from there that he begins to weave his web of relationships that will lead him, as a man of the left, to try to solve the problem of illegal immigration with a right-wing policy. Everything changes so that nothing changes: the current right-wing government feels more comfortable in pampering itself with the “old” leftists, from Violante to De Gennaro. And thanks also to the “Minniti Code”, which in 2017 prohibits NGO ships from picking up illegal immigrants in Libyan territorial waters, Minniti has taken on the role of ruthless solver; although it was a functional agreement, it is now judged “inhumane” by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Regretful? It seems not. So much so that he is said to be thinking of a similar plan with Tunisia. After all, “the Italian System exists” and “we must stimulate cooperation and govern competition”, stated Minniti when presenting Giorgia Meloni’s Mattei Plan: power has no colour, and like salamanders, men of action know how to change skin with every turn of the sun. With this operation endorsed by Alfredo Mantovano, Minniti is a candidate for anything: aspiring leader of the Democratic Party or man of a right-wing government. A true Machiavellian prince. The end justifies the means.
#Bisignanis #background #Tempo
