It’s a bit like the game of goose. Rai’s external contracts? The Loft case? “They are a management issue, the CEO will talk about it”. Marinella Soldi also prefers to avoid the question, making it a question of roles and skills. Yesterday morning, in the Supervisory Commission, between Scurati, level playing field and artificial intelligence, the president of Rai tried to respond to the requests of Maria Elena Boschi. But to find out more, says Soldi, you have to knock on Roberto Sergio’s door. The same one who in recent days, and faced with the same questions, was also trying to buy time.
It’s a bit like the game of goose. Rai’s external contracts? The Loft case? “They are a management issue, the CEO will talk about it”. Marinella Soldi also prefers to avoid the question, making it a question of roles and skills. Yesterday morning, in the Supervisory Committee, between Scurati, level playing field and artificial intelligence, the president of Rai tried to respond to Maria Elena Boschi’s requests. But to find out more, says Soldi, you have to knock on Roberto Sergio’s door. The same one who in recent days, and faced with the same questions, was also trying to buy time.
“What are the relationships between Viale Mazzini and the daily newspaper? Has Rai saved the budgets of the Travaglio newspaper?”, the Italia viva MP has been asking for a few weeks now – who in this battle has found an unusual, yet combative, support in Maurizio Gasparri. She was the first, after the article published by this newspaper, to raise the case in institutional settings (and not only). She promised to get to the bottom of it. It was she who asked Sergio and then general director Giampaolo Rossi for clarification, obtaining poor results. For this reason, when yesterday Marinella Soldi threw the ball into a corner kick once again, putting everything back at the top of the company, the Renzian deputy went on the attack (again). “It is incredible – she wrote in a note – that among so many internal professionals, Rai continues to turn to someone external to purchase formats. Unfortunately, after Sergio and Rossi’s lack of responses, President Soldi also chooses not to respond.” It is what Gasparri shortly afterwards defined as “the company’s silence, they always say that someone else will take care of it”. But unlike the Forza Italia senator, for Boschi the issue is not just economic. It is also – perhaps above all – political, that is, it is linked to the relationship between Giuseppe Conte and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, to alleged backroom agreements that would allow the grillini to have space and autonomy on state television. “Citizens pay the license fee and have the right to know how their money is being spent. Why is the 5 Star Movement silent? Where has the transparency so invoked in the past gone? It must have been buried under the seats”, adds Boschi.
Response from the Grillino group leader in Rai Supervision: “If clarity needs to be clarified, as is right, it must be done on all external contracts, especially taking into account the proportions given that there are external companies linked to former managers who do infinitely larger multi-million dollar deals with Rai of those attributed to Loft,” says Dario Carotenuto, referring to Atlantica Digital, of which Gasparri was president. “And you cannot ask for clarity on and off and only according to your own interest.”
However, external productions were not the only controversy of the day. Because, again during the Supervisory Commission, Soldi’s reversal on the Scurati case also arrived. “There were anomalous actions” in terms of timing, there was damage to the image and errors in the management of the matter. “But no censorial intent can be attributed to the company’s top management. There was a violation of corporate privacy by Bortone. The CEO’s reconstruction is substantially correct”, the president puts on record. Just a few days ago Soldi defined that same reconstruction as “partial, significant aspects are missing”. An unexpected (at least apparent) turning point in a governmental sense, which arouses a reaction from the opposition. “The president has today completely recanted. What pressure did you receive?”, the PD parliamentarians ask, evoking conspiracies and conspiracy theories. Maybe. The fact is that the first to be surprised by Marinella Soldi’s change of pace in the end was Roberto Sergio himself. Who – they say in Viale Mazzini – fearing a new offensive, pushed for the choice of Carlo Conti as the new director and host of the Sanremo festival to be made public very early in the morning, to take the titles before the Supervision audition even began.
