La
Befana e Parmalat.
di Tony Barber, da Financial Times dell'8 gennaio, scelta dei brani e
traduzione a cura di Giulia Alliani per Bollettino Osservatorio
In Italia lo spettro della Parmalat infesta il nuovo ordine politico. "Il 6 gennaio in Italia, per tradizione, una vecchia strega che si chiama Befana vola a cavallo di un manico di scopa, di casa in casa, portando doni. I bambini buoni ricevono dolci e regali, per quelli cattivi ci sono pezzi di carbone."
" Quando ieri, dopo le vacanze invernali, i politici e gli uomini d'affari italiani sono tornati al loro tavolo di lavoro hanno trovato un luccicante pezzo di carbone nella forma dello scandalo Parmalat."
Secondo il Financial Times, l'affare Parmalat servira' a verificare la capacita' dei nuovi partiti di ridurre la possibilita' di futuri scandali. Infatti, pur essendo d'accordo sulla necessita' di attuare una riforma, i partiti della coalizione di Berlusconi non riescono a trovare un'intesa sui tempi e sui dettagli.
Il progetto del ministro Tremonti e' sostenuto dalla Lega e da Forza Italia, ma trova resistenza da parte di AN e UDC, che non gradiscono che venga limitata l'autorita' della Banca d'Italia. Il ministro Tremonti non e' in buoni rapporti con il governatore Fazio, e il FT esprime il timore che le frizioni all'interno della coalizione abbiano come risultato l'approvazione di una riforma incompleta e insufficiente .
Ancora carbone per i politici italiani?
Originale integrale
Spectre of Parmalat haunts Italy's new political order
By Tony Barber Financial Time Published: January 8 2004 4:00 | Last Updated: January 8 2004 4:00
On the twelfth night after Christmas, according to Italian folklore, an old witch named La Befana flies from house to house on a broomstick to deliver gifts. Good children get toys or sweets, bad ones lumps of coal. As Italy's politicians and businessmen returned to work yesterday from their winter break, they found a jet black object on their desks in the shape of the Parmalat scandal. Allegations of a multi-billion euro fraud are not only dragging down the reputation of the food and dairy group that symbolised the city of Parma to the world. They are also posing hard questions for banks, auditors, regulators and the centre-right government of Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's prime minister.
For some Italians, this is the biggest national scandal since the tangentopoli "kickback city" affair of the early 1990s, when investigators uncovered a vast network of corruption linking politicians, their parties, business leaders, other professionals and the state administration. "Unfortunately, not much has changed in the country since tangentopoli," Marco DeLuca, a lawyer for Parmalat's new management, said yesterday. "Only the type of offence is different. Once it was corruption, now it's financial crashes." One important outcome of the tangentopoli scandals was the collapse of the party system dominated by the now-defunct Christian Democrats that had defined Italy's political landscape since the late 1940s.
The interrogations of leading Parmalat figures such as Fausto Tonna, former chief financial officer, have not so far publicly implicated any politicians, but the affair is testing the new party system's ability to minimise the risk of a future scandal. Mr Berlusconi's four-party coalition, though broadly agreed on the need to reform financial market regulation, is split on the timing and detail. Giulio Tremonti, the finance minister, wants to press ahead with a "super-authority" that would place securities markets, insurance and pension funds regulation under one roof, as in the UK. He has already drafted a bill to that effect.
Italy's cabinet will meet tomorrow, but government insiders say Mr Tremonti's bill is not expected to come up for discussion until one of the next two cabinet sessions on January 16 and 23. Most legislators belonging to Forza Italia, the party led by Mr Berlusconi and in which Mr Tremonti is a senior figure, broadly favour the finance minister's plan. Less clear is the attitude of the populist Northern League, led by Umberto Bossi, minister for reforms. Ever a wild card, he is threatening to pull out of the coalition by the end of this month unless there is clear progress on constitutional changes that would boost his electoral base in northern Italy by bringing in a federal, decentralised system.
There is clearly scope for a compromise with the League, but there is an equal risk that Mr Tremonti's plan will run aground on internal coalition disputes that have already held up the constitutional changes for months. Meanwhile, cabinet members from the other two parties, the rightwing National Alliance and the moderate Union of the Democratic Centre, are less keen on Mr Tremonti's proposal. Some, such as Maurizio Gasparri, the National Alliance communications minis ter, and Rocco Buttiglione, the UDC minister for European affairs, want to await the conclusions of parliamentary investigations into Parmalat before settling the reform's details.
Legislators are anxious to make their mark on the Parmalat inquiry, which is certain to last into next month. National Alliance and UDC politicians are also wary of Mr Tremonti's proposal because they suspect it might go too far in curbing the authority of the Bank of Italy, the central bank, which is one of the country's most respected institutions. Under Antonio Fazio, its governor since 1993, the Bank of Italy has played the pre-eminent role in guiding Italy's banking sector. Industry fears the famously poor relationship between Mr Tremonti and Mr Fazio, and the strains inside the coalition, might produce a less than perfect regulatory reform.
"Up to now, the logic of political competition, personal polemics and power struggles have taken precedence over the real problems," Antonio D'Amato, president of Confindustria, the industrialists' group, told his members yesterday. If his warning is borne out, Italy's politicians may yet find more coal on their hands.
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