The Milan prosecutor's office has requested the dismissal of the six people - three Italians and three Russians - accused in 2018 of negotiating a huge oil deal at the Metropol hotel in Moscow.

The request was signed by the prosecutors Giovanni Polizzi and Cecilia Vassena and endorsed by the deputy prosecutor Fabio De Pasquale.

The request concerns the former spokesman of Matteo Salvini and president of the LombardiaRussia association Gianluca Savoini , the lawyer Gianluca Meranda and the former banker Francesco Vannucci, all under investigation for international corruption . At the center of the investigation, which also passed through rogatory letters in Russia (but without a response from the Moscow authorities), there was an alleged negotiation, which took place at the Metropol hotel in Moscow with a meeting on 18 October 2018, between the three suspects and as many alleged Russian intermediaries on an oil deal which, according to an audio recording, should have had the aim of feeding the League's coffers with 65 million dollars.

With searches and seizures, a photo of a sheet with the details of the agreement was also found in the cell phones of Savoini, Meranda and Vannucci. The note contained presumed percentages to be divided between the League (4%) and the Russian intermediaries (6%) on a consignment of oil worth one and a half billion dollars. The Prosecutor had asked the Russian authorities to be able to hear some people in the minutes, including the alleged intermediaries identified. Request left unanswered. After three extensions and after the expiry of the terms to investigate, the request for filing arrived.

However, the negotiation was not successful: the investigators never found traces of money transfers.

Ilya Andreevich Yakunin and Andrey Yuryevich Kharchenko were present at the meeting at the Metropol, the latter a former secret service agent and both apparently linked to far-right ideologue Aleksandr Dugin and Vladimir Pligin, a politician close to President Vladimir Putin. And also Yury Burundukov, who is allegedly linked to the oligarch Konstantin Malofeev.

(Unioneonline/D)

© Riproduzione riservata