“Gift to the Benettons”, the mess under the Conte government – ​​

Urgent question to the Minister of Economy and Finance and the Ministry of Culture by Fabio Rampelli on the sell-off of the rationalist building that for years was the headquarters of the INPS legal office in Piazza Augusto Imperatore. The building, listed between 187 and 210 million euros, was sold to Edizione Property, 20% owned by the Benettons, for just 150 million following a negotiation in 2019 during the Conte II Government, while the Capitoline administration of Mayor Virginia Raggi closed the change of intended use in record time, just six months, allowing the transformation of the offices into a hotel. The parliamentarian of Fratelli d’Italia and vice president of the Chamber of Deputies spoke in Montecitorio denouncing the “opaque operation on which I hope the judiciary investigates”.

We are talking about “one of the most important urban living rooms in Europe, with the Ara Pacis overlooking the Lungotevere, the Mausoleum of Augustus that will be completed in a few months and the square completely redeveloped thanks to an international design competition. It is the right of the State to generate income from its assets, it is not its right to give gifts to the usual suspects. This priceless property was not sold to the highest bidder through a public tender, nor was it rented for n decades to the most profitable proposal, it is being used by Bulgari, a well-known French company for over ten years, with an urban transformation in its belly authorized in record time and before the operation was closed. Who was that seer who already knew what would happen to it?”, asks Rampelli. And again: “We are in the historic center of Rome, anyone who has even just a simple shop would take years to move a simple partition. Instead, in just six months, the building receives the change of use from offices to an ultra-luxury hotel, with all the authorizations to proceed to demolish the interiors, which are restricted; we are not talking about inanimate walls but loggias, colonnades, mosaics”.

“It’s a disturbing mess,” Rampelli said, “in which the current government is not involved. In 2019, the deal was concluded, Giuseppe Conte reigned as head of government. It’s not him in person, of course, but while he was thinking of excluding Benetton from the Autostrade company due to the tragedy of the Morandi Bridge in Genoa, the well-known family that supports the Democratic Party was allowed to complete this ignoble speculation, with great benefit to Regia srl, in which they have a stake,” Rampelli attacks.