"Give us our daily dossier today." Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni thus comments on the news, released by the newspaper Domani, of an ongoing investigation by the Bari prosecutor's office into a former employee of Intesa Sanpaolo who allegedly accessed over 6,000 current accounts, "all abusive."
In the crosshairs are military personnel, VIPs and above all politicians starting with the Prime Minister, her sister Arianna, head of the political secretariat of FdI and also her ex-partner, the journalist Andrea Giambruno, the ministers Daniela Santanchè and Guido Crosetto, the president of the Senate Ignazio La Russa and the prosecutor of the DNA Giovanni Melillo.
But these are only a part of the thousands of names of current account holders - the newspaper reconstructs - peeked at and monitored by the former bank employee.
The official, fired last August 8 after the opening of a disciplinary proceeding, is at great risk, given that he may have violated the secrecy of highly sensitive data on political figures . The dismissal was followed by the opening of an investigation proceeding, still ongoing, by the Bari prosecutor's office.
According to the newspaper, the prosecutor's office is trying to understand the reason for these illegal accesses, a question that remains unanswered at the moment. The amount of accesses would be enormous and unlike what happened in the case of the Perugia investigation into the leak of information, it is not, Domani explains, reports of suspicious transactions by the UIF or data from judicial investigations, but much more private and sensitive information, such as current account movements.
The accesses would have been almost seven thousand, made between February 21, 2022 and April 24, 2024, and would have more specifically concerned the over three thousand five hundred portfolio customers of 679 branches of Intesa Sanpaolo, spread throughout Italy. Outside the government structure, the accounts of the governors of Puglia and Veneto, Michele Emiliano and Luca Zaia, of the public prosecutor of Trani, Renato Nitti, of officers of the Arma and the Guardia di Finanza would have been violated.
The investigation started almost by chance, thanks to the work of the bank's security, which realized that something was wrong. Now it will be up to the judiciary and the Privacy Guarantor, where a complaint from the bank is pending, to shed light on the possible consequences of what happened.
"The employee's behavior not in line with internal procedures and industry regulations emerged during ordinary control activities - Intesa says - including a complex system aimed at identifying any anomalous or risky behavior related to consultations carried out by Bank employees authorized to process customer data". Systems that, the bank says, worked.
(Unioneonline/D)
