Raffaele Barberio, who is (and what he thinks) the consultant to Undersecretary Butti
The undersecretary to the Prime Minister, Alessio Butti (Fratelli d'Italia), appointed Raffaele Barberio, director of the Key4Biz website, as his consultant, who had repeatedly supported Butti's positions (with whom he had also done a river interview). The facts, the names and the reconstruction of the newspaper Domani
From a river interview with a politician to a consultancy for the same politician, the step can be short. This is what Raffaele Barberio, journalist and director of the Key4Biz site, specializing in telecommunications, did.
Barberio has in fact become a consultant to the Undersecretary of the Prime Minister, Alessio Butti (Brothers of Italy), who is in charge of innovation and follows the single network dossier on behalf of the party and the government.
WHO IS RAFFAELE BARBERIO
“Expert in Communication and Institutional Relations, Barberio is director of Supercom, a business relations company that operates at the service of institutions and companies. In 2001 he founded Key4biz, the online newspaper on the digital economy and the culture of the future, of which he is managing director”, see in Barberio's biography.
WHAT KEY4BIZ DOES
“Key4biz.it – reads the website – offers Business Relations services, advanced communication and public relations services, together with the organization of events, video production, content management, as tools to support the activities of companies and Public administrations".
BARBER'S POSITIONS
In recent years, the site on the subject of 5G and its surroundings has not had pro-US positions like those of the Meloni government ("US-China. A Hi-Tech war that damages everyone and from which Europe must withdraw", is the title of a his editorial ), so much so as to not occasionally host the positions of the Chinese Huawei: positions similar to those of the 5 Star Movement whose exponents have always been present in the editorial initiatives of the Barberio site.
TOMORROW NEWSPAPER ON BARBERIO AND BUTTI
On Barberio and Butti today the newspaper Domani wrote : “Undersecretary Alessio Butti has hired journalist Raffaele Barberio on his staff. Butti has the responsibility for innovation and therefore the management of the single national network match. Task entrusted to him by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni . In Barberio the guarantee of an excellent remuneration of 80 thousand euros for an eleven-month contract, from February 2023 to January 2024 ″.
“Barberio's role would now require a step back from the journalistic trenches at least on issues directly related to the undersecretary he works for. Yet until a few days ago the journalist, regardless of the double role, signed a long analysis on the newspaper that he continues to direct entitled «Open Fiber at the end of the line. Reset of the company immediately if we want to relaunch the Italian telecommunications industry». – wrote Giovanni Tizian of the newspaper directed by Emanuele Fittipaldi – Of course there is also another relevant fact in this trench warfare: Open Fiber has started a civil action against him asking him for 1.5 million euros. Remarkable amount for a small newspaper. Barberio contacted by Domani exchanges a few words with the reporter, he lets himself go into very harsh comments on the director of Domani, but immediately afterwards he removed the messages from the WhatsApp chat. «No comment», is the definitive reply, «write and I will read to see if you write the same lies as your director»”.
EXTRACT OF THE ARTICLE FROM THE NEWSPAPER TOMORROW ON BARBERIO E BUTTI ( FULL ARTICLE HERE )
Nothing strange if it weren't for the fact that Barberio is the managing director of the specialized site Key4biz . Warhead on which a barrage of vitriolic articles against Cassa Depositi e Prestiti and Open Fiber were published, the most important players in the field in the single national network deal. Barberio was recently hired with the position of "image and promotion manager" in the office of Undersecretary Butti, who, as revealed by Domani in an article dated November 2022, would appreciate an alternative solution to the one proposed by CDP and Open Fiber and by their managing directors, Dario Scannapieco (appointed by Mario Draghi) and Mario Rossetti.
In fact, Butti has (had) a plan renamed " Minerva " in mind: the network must remain in the hands not of Open Fiber, but of Tim, which will have to return to state hands with the entry of Cdp. However, no one has yet seen an official document of the Butti project, which would have not exactly irrelevant consequences for the public coffers: the scheme of the Fratelli d'Italia manager would force the CDP and other subjects to launch a takeover bid on Tim, would the French of Tim (Vivendi), but the 25 billion euro debt of the telephone company would weigh on state budgets. Meloni does not express himself on the subject, but his trust in the faithful has begun to waver a few months ago. Even the Minister of Economy Giancarlo Giorgetti has always had many doubts about the strategies of the Melonian.
This is the context in which Barberio moves, who in the summer of 2022 became a pasdaran of the Butti plan. Barberio is now an essential member of the undersecretary's team, so much so that he has his own email address @teamdigitale.gov. To understand the harmony of the two it is useful to reread an interview with the undersecretary premonitory of the "Minerva plan". Interview conducted three months before Meloni won the elections and Butti became Undersecretary for Innovation.
On August 25, 2022, Butti replied to director Barberio's questions as follows: «One of the changed conditions lies in the failure of the management of Open Fiber… Unfortunately, with the new Cdp management of Open Fiber many things have changed in the company strategy. The best managers have fled or are leaving the company… Unfortunately, and I say this with sincere regret, Open Fiber no longer has the credibility or ability to be the linchpin of the "single network" operation, as conceived up to now by CDP. Let me also say that management must be chosen on the basis of managerial skills and not political affiliation».
The "exclusive" interview followed a series of reports against CDP and Open Fiber, in September of the same year we find Barberio moderating a conference on telecommunications with Butti present together with representatives of the most important companies in the sector. At the time, someone could not help but notice the absence of Open Fiber among the guests. There are a total of 42 articles on the Open Fiber "disaster" published from June to November, the campaign began in June 2022, in conjunction with a question on the subject presented, ça va sans dir , by Butti, then a member of parliament for Fratelli d Italy and media and telecommunications manager for Meloni's party.
And so in January the circle came full circle: Butti signs the decree to contract the director of Key4biz, a journalist, publicist and not registered in the list of professionals as is usual for a director in charge of a newspaper. The newspaper's publishing company is Supercom srl, a lobby firm founded by Silvana Torquati and Raniero Dragonetti, former director of about twenty cinema, bingo and real estate companies. The president of Supercom is Alberto Mannelli, a professor from Ancona appointed during the years of the Berlusconi governments to the boards of Buonitalia, Sace and the Crea institute.
EXTRACT FROM THE RIVER INTERVIEW WITH BARBERIO A BUTTI PUBLISHED ON NOVEMBER 2, 2022 (FULL ARTICLE HERE )
Key4biz. Mr Butti, a lot has been said on the subject in recent weeks, can you clarify what your party's position is on the single network and what role TIM and Open Fiber should have?
Alessio Butti . Nothing new under the sun. Our position has always been clear and coherent and was recently reaffirmed by the President of our party, Giorgia Meloni. Frankly, the false exegesis of some journalists, evidently uninformed or in bad faith, is disconcerting. We simply want Italy to return to being a European protagonist in telecommunications, as are France and Germany, where the incumbents are still under the control of their respective governments.
Key4biz. How to implement this strategic objective with the "single network"?
Alessio Butti . What we have always said is that we want the new fiber network, right down to homes, to be a single, national, publicly controlled (therefore Italian) and wholesale-only network. From the outset we have supported this model which separates the grid from services and which has many important precedents in our country, just think of Terna which serves companies operating in the electricity market, but also of RFI which offers the infrastructure to Trenitalia and Italian. Coming back to us, it is unthinkable that the national incumbent of the fixed network is also present in the retail market, above all in a telecommunications market such as the Italian one where, unlike the rest of Europe, there has never been cable (which would have changed the competitive dynamics, as happened in the rest of Europe). But I would also like to add a far from secondary aspect. FdI is the only party to have presented and supported a series of industrial policy proposals on the network, cloud and 5G. And Giorgia Meloni is the only party leader to have dealt in detail with a game of such extraordinary importance for the digital transformation of the country, on which the other parties have remained silent for long months, a game still open for which more than 40 billion of investments are planned.
Key4biz. So let's get into the details, why should TIM maintain the network, as you argue in contrast to the CDP-TIM plan?
Alessio Butti . This is the second reason that led us to develop our alternative proposal. We are convinced that TIM cannot and must not lose the network. There is no telecommunications operator in the world without a network. It would be like having a restaurant without a kitchen. The network must not be separated, it must instead remain in the hands of TIM and, if anything, it must be TIM that aggregates the Open Fiber network under itself. It is the services that have to be abandoned. And we are so convinced of this choice, to the point of expecting a surge in the share on the stock exchange in the following months, because this is what international investors are looking for: convincing business models, sustainable development plans, full adherence to European standards, goodwill from governments ,
Key4biz. Explain to us better…
Alessio Butti . The motivation is obvious, without the network and only with the service company, TIM could hardly stand. Among other things, within a few months we will certainly find ourselves with the loss of thousands more jobs, in addition to the 3,400 already announced, between voluntary departures and early retirements. We are therefore talking about very heavy social consequences that we cannot afford. On the other hand, leaving the network in the hands of TIM is therefore also the best guarantee for employment protection. All insiders know perfectly well that it is the network that guarantees the company's cash flow and ensures the highest margins.
Key4biz. Then there is the problem on the one hand of Vivendi, which is now the reference shareholder of TIM, and on the other of Macquarie and KKR, respectively in Open Fiber and Fibercop…
Alessio Butti . The absurd claims of Vivendi, which values TIM's old copper network at as much as 31/34 billion euros, effectively make the CDP-TIM-OPEN FIBER plan unfeasible. It would be impossible to justify the fact that CDP would have to pay such a disproportionate amount for a network that will be decommissioned by 2026, the date on which the Italian government, through Minister Vittorio Colao, undertook with Europe to cover the entire territory Italian with fiber up to homes and offices. A dispute and a long discussion on the value of the network would therefore inevitably arise, in addition to the technical problems due to the difficulties and times that the spin-off of a network can involve. So I repeat, who and how could ever justify an outlay of this nature by CDP? At the Rimini Meeting Arnaud De Puyfontaine, CEO of Vivendi, underlined the importance of the single network, inviting everyone to move so that it can be done, without worrying about who will own the property, whether public or private. We find it difficult to understand this approach, especially if behind these statements a parallel negotiation is developing on the sale of the TIM network to CDP, with, on the one hand, the 31-34 billion euros requested by Vivendi and, on the other, the 21-25 billion beyond which CDP would not like to go.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/raffaele-barberio-chi-e-cosa-pensa-consulente-sottosegretario-butti/ on Tue, 23 May 2023 07:39:41 +0000.