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Mps, Bankitalia, diamonds. What the Bertini case hides

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Mps, Bankitalia, diamonds. What the Bertini case hides

Facts, comments and scenarios on the Mps-diamonds case. The in-depth study by Giuseppe Liturri

Mps-diamonds-Bank of Italy case: the moment has come to ascertain the truth, in parliament, on the affair of the sale of diamonds through some banks, which took place with commercially incorrect methods, which gave rise to a criminal proceeding that is still ongoing.

We learned from sources close to the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into the Banking System (which met its presidency on Tuesday 18 February) that on Tuesday 8 February the governor himself, Ignazio Visco, was summoned to have a reconstruction of the affair and help the Commission. to shed light on the correct and effective functioning of the supervisory bodies. But the activity of the Commission – which, we recall, operates with the same powers and the same limitations as the judicial authority – will not end on 8 February. The presenter of the Report broadcast will be heard below, Sigfrido Ranucci who in the episode of 13 December last aired the report edited by Emanuele Bellano with the version of the story provided by the Bank of Italy official Carlo Bertini. It will then be the turn of a member of the FALBI union who assists Bankitalia employees, followed by a representative of the Antitrust authority (Agcm) who, since 2017, has sanctioned the banks involved.

No decision has been made regarding the possible summoning of Alessandro Profumo and Fabrizio Viola who, at the time of the events between 2012 and 2016, were respectively President and CEO of Monte dei Paschi di Siena, one of the five banks involved in the affair. . Our sources however report that it is not excluded that this happens and any other calls will depend on what will emerge in the first meetings already scheduled.

It is of particular importance that Bank of Italy was involved at the top level, even if the general manager Luigi Signorini could participate. It is not surprising since, already in the aftermath of last month's episode of Report , the President of the Commission, Carla Ruocco, did not hesitate to take the initiative , stressing the need for in-depth analysis at the highest levels.

After the detailed explanatory note of December, further clarifications must come from via Nazionale on the relationship with Bertini, an employee of the Bank of Italy with the role of senior adviser in charge of the banking supervision service 1, who, in the television program Report of 13 December , has launched accusations both at some banks and their executives, who used their branches to broker the sale of diamonds, and at his superiors in the Bank of Italy who, according to him, would have shown little attention to his solicitations to carry out investigations and, subsequently, they would have passed to more or less explicit pressures aimed at dissuading him from continuing.

A few days before Christmas, the disciplinary proceedings against Bertini – after the precautionary suspension on 22 October last – ended with the decision of the Superior Council of Palazzo Koch to suspend Bertini from service and salary for 12 months (reduced by half ), with attribution to another task other than that of supervision. It is the most severe sanction before the dismissal, which was feared both by Bertini and by the trade unions which, due to this narrow escape, canceled the strike announced for December 28th.

To reconstruct the whole story, it is precisely from Report that we must start anyway because it was Milena Gabanelli with Emanuele Bellano on October 17, 2016 who lifted the veil on the alleged scam. Two private companies (DPI SpA and IDB SpA) had dramatically multiplied their turnover by marketing diamonds through the branches of five banks (Monte dei Paschi, Unicredit, Intesa, BPM, Banca Aletti) in a non-transparent way, at prices that were not marketable (almost doubled), collecting commissions up to 24%. The Milan public prosecutor had already been at work since 2012 and last April asked for the indictment of 5 legal persons (four banks and IDB SpA, while Intesa and DPI SpA asked for a plea bargain) and 105 people including bank executives and officials and the selling companies and the preliminary stage hearings are currently underway. The hypothesized offenses are fraud, self-laundering, money laundering, corruption between individuals and, in one case, an obstacle to the supervisory authority.

The diamond trading activities channeled by the banks took place between 2012 and 2017 for approximately 1.4 billion total value and the unwary, and at the same time unaware, more than one hundred thousand buyers found themselves in a short time in possession of an asset that is difficult to liquidate and purchased on the basis of off-market prices, even if published on the Sole 24 Ore , on the official quotations page, which however were only advertisements published by … the selling companies themselves. The unfairness of this commercial practice was already sanctioned in September 2017 by the Antitrust authority for a total of € 12.3 million charged to the banks involved, accused of "seriously misleading and omissive" conduct. Recognizing the assumption that the buyers had bought the diamonds relying on the reputation of the proposing banks, all the banks involved initiated relief measures against the cheated buyers and, for example, MPS as of 30/6/2021 had repaid 314 million against disputes for 344 million. During 2019, the story was then enriched with further disturbing evidence regarding the involvement of organized crime in the money laundering activity of the fraud.

It was MPS bank that was the object of Bertini's attention, which participated as local coordinator in the joint working group (JST, Joint Supervisor Team headed by the ECB) in charge of prudential supervision. An activity carried out mainly in paper form, different although contiguous to the actual inspection activity. During 2018, Bertini and some of his colleagues would have accumulated important clues relating to the scam and, above all, to the awareness of it by the top management of MPS in the people of the President Alessandro Profumo (from 2012 to 2015) and the CEO Fabrizio Viola ( from 2012 to 2016). Bertini's thesis – set out in detail in the Report transmission – is that his requests for further information remained unheard by his superiors in the Bank of Italy, where attempts to dissuade him from insisting prevailed. Until the end of the suspension from service a few days ago.

The Bank of Italy responded to Bertini's accusations with a 5-page note published on the site on 15 December, in which it presents its version of the facts and a comment on Bertini's statements.

After having defined the reconstruction of the Report as "incomplete and erroneous", in which the Bank of Italy's action was "represented in a distorted way", the "inaccurate and misleading" statements are rectified as follows:

  • Bank of Italy supervision deals with financial products and assets, but diamond trading is not. What happened is a problem of commercial correctness within the competence of the Antitrust which had already intervened in 2017, sanctioning the subjects involved. There is no shortage of perplexities on this point: regardless of the smallness of the AGCM sanctions in proportion to the turnover achieved, we would like to observe that those who go to the bank must be sure that any activity carried out under that sign is supervised, regardless of the specific products offered to the customer.
  • Palazzo Koch intervened both in 2017, investigating the dimensions of the phenomenon, and in 2018, inviting banks to refrain from these operations, for which they must ensure "adequate verification of the adequacy of prices and maximum disclosure transparency".
  • The collaboration with the Public Prosecutor's Office was total, contributing to the advancement of the investigations that led to the well-known indictments.
  • The inspection activities, on the anti-money laundering front, led to a fine of 1.3 million for MPS.
  • The ECB's inspection of prudential supervision revealed “insufficient awareness of the board of directors with reference to the bank's exposure to the risks in question”. Therefore, Bertini's hypothesis of the presumed awareness of the leaders of MPS is radically denied.
  • Any pressure is denied and Bertini is attributed with "highly anomalous behavior" and "grievances of a personal nature".
  • Bertini is accused of having discredited and damaged the reputation of colleagues, superiors and the Bank.

We come from a terrible decade for banks, characterized by the collapse of the two Venetian banks, of the four banks liquidated at the end of 2015, by the precautionary recapitalization by the State of the same MPS at the beginning of 2017 and, unfortunately, on all occasions it was put into discussion of the correctness of Bankitalia's behavior, a defense of legality whose competences have been a heritage of the entire country for decades. Furthermore, in this matter the work of managers who still hold positions of great responsibility, on which it is in everyone's interest not to discredit, is under discussion.

If the problem was there and the Bank of Italy monitored late and then minimized, badly. If such a solid institution has not been able to manage an employee who has moved in a sprawling way, equally bad. But now the time of the "ifs" is over and it will be up to the protagonists, starting with Governor Visco, in parliamentary hearing from February 8, to clear the field of all doubts.

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/primo-piano/mps-bankitalia-diamanti-caso-bertini/ on Sun, 23 Jan 2022 07:34:08 +0000.