Don't look at it like that, it's not a garage, despite its appearance. Don't be fooled either by the dead-end street on Via Simplicio Spano, on the dirt road where the rides usually send us. On the maps it is the outskirts of Olbia. In the maps of the energy assault, however, it is a camouflaged crossroads of deals, pawns, memorable climbs from the north to the south of the island, Chinese boxes and corporate entanglements that make the financial networks of the "Panama Papers" pale.

That fake “garage”

When you arrive in the Quartucciu countryside and you glance at those first green containers with the indelible "Made in China" brand, you understand that the gentlemen of "EnergyQ1Bess", those of the apparent garage in Olbia, were not joking. In 2021, when the wind and photovoltaic assault on the island was still in its infancy, they were already planning how to fill Sardinia with Chinese "batteries" to store the energy produced for no reason by shovels and panels to be spread in those sort of electrochemical cells with impunity in the most evocative promontories of the land of the Nuraghi. Never, even those like our newspaper, who intercepted that project hidden in the meanders of the palaces of Rome two years ago, could have even imagined what was hidden behind what appeared to be a cheap ambition.

From Olbia to ancient Rome

An operation destined to dissolve in an instant, in the face of the advance of giants and multinationals, if only because that company in the alley of Olbia had a paid-up capital of just ten thousand euros. A corporate "solidity" not even sufficient to cultivate the illusion of being able to build an expanse of Chinese lithium on the outskirts of Cagliari. Instead, the story tells a completely different story. The company that is building the largest electrochemical battery in Italy, 180 megawatts, is nominally the same one registered on the outskirts of "Terranova", but on 18 December 2023 it changed partners and headquarters. From the dead end of the Gallura city to the powerful heart of ancient Rome. The step was short, just enough time for the old partners, those from Olbia, to get the mega battery project approved by the Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security.

They give up pace and actions

From that moment they removed the trouble to give up their share and shareholdings to the state energy giant, Enel. A "turnkey" package that leaves no room for doubt: the operation is amazing. The figures reported at the entrance gate to the construction site on the new State Road 554 leave no room for subterfuge: works expected to cost 78 million euros. Two hundred "electrochemical" containers of Chinese production intended, according to state plans, for a battery with 180 megawatts of power capable of generating a mountain of state incentives equal to 183 million euros in twenty years. A deal with many zeros, for a gigantic energy accumulation destined, however, in the short-medium term to transform into a devastating "cathedral in the desert", not only due to increasingly rapid technological evolution, but above all due to the Chinese origin of those steel boxes full of lithium.

That unknown “pledge”.

The one carried out in the "Separassiu" countryside is, however, only the first operation of a much broader scenario capable of involving dozens of satellite companies and as many circumspect agreements all "hidden" in the meanders of the "electric" buildings of the capital. A game entirely played on the Quartucciu-Olbia-Rome triangle, with intermediaries, offices and mechanisms planned around the table to keep everything under wraps, starting from the value of the "pledge", the one placed by Enel Green Power on the Chinese battery project close to the metropolitan area of Cagliari.

The secret contract

Not a token of medieval memory, nothing to do with the "Monte della Pietà" of Franciscan inspiration. What the partners of "EnergyQ1bess", Stefano Floris and Cinzia Nieddu, compulsorily include in the corporate "curriculum" is much more than a "guarantee". Not a mortgage, but almost, given that we are dealing with "movable assets", such as shares in a limited liability company, only apparently insignificant. What Enel Green Power "places" on the Gallura company is a "pledge" from the Civil Code, a real real right of guarantee on an asset nominally belonging to others, but which gives the electricity giant immediate and direct power, regardless of the person who has the material availability. A "pledge" that allows maximum coverage for the creditor, in this case Enel, while at the same time allowing it to omit the value of the operation in public documents.

The “garage” system

The mechanism they adopt is revealed in one of the "pledges" signed before a Notary and sealing wax: the company of the "fake" garage in Olbia has «concluded a development contract "BESS project of Quartucciu" - for 180 megawatts with the company "Enel Green Power Italia Srl", with sole shareholder, subject to management and coordination by "Enel SpA", with registered office in Rome, share capital of 272 million euros".

Ant & elephant

In practice, a financial "elephant" like the state-owned electric multinational asks a corporate "ant", established a few months ago, with a capital of just ten thousand euros, to "develop" nothing less than a 78 million euro project, exactly the cost of the Chinese Quartucciu battery. They never even talk about numbers in the pledge contract. Everything is referred to a "contract" which, in the official documents, is omitted with the formula "which here is understood as reported", but which is never mentioned. The mechanism leaves no margins: "to guarantee the obligations, the grantor has undertaken to establish a specific lien on all of the shares of the special purpose vehicle, up to the maximum guaranteed amount equal to the purchase price of the individual project as calculated in the contract". The legal-financial "slang" allows you to say everything, but allows you to deny the figures of that contract. The final gloss is even more explicit: «The pledge is granted up to the maximum guaranteed amount equal to the purchase price of the individual project as calculated in the contract».

The multiplication of pledges

The amount of that "pledge", however, must not be of little importance if the "fake garage" company in Olbia takes a liking to it, to the point of transforming the "Alchemist" studio, at number ten in via Simplicio Spano in the Gallura city , in a real multiplier of pledges and companies, "militarily" designing the energy climb on the island of Sardinia. The map and graph that we report in this investigation is the most eloquent representation of what has been planned in every detail. Not a "compulsive" declination to the creation of cheap companies, but a real action plan with the most imposing of the state electricity giants, Enel, behind it.

The Sardinian "climb".

A chessboard to be kept rigorously camouflaged, contemplating a further corporate split of the multinational, with the sudden establishment of the recipient of the "EnergyQ1bess" shares, the newly formed "Enel Libra Flexsys srl". The strategy, however, had already been deployed at that point: from 2021 until the end of 2023, "Alchemist srl" set up 14 companies destined to get their hands on millionaire incentives, through "mirror projects", capable of replicating the mechanism effectively tested in Quartucciu. One after the other, the satellite companies of the "pledge system" set up in great secrecy by the Gallura company with Enel are born.

The "check" map

Most confirm the location on the outskirts of Olbia, some others digress towards Poetto in Cagliari, from via Isola di Pantelleria to via Isola di San Pietro. They are not original with the names, except for the location of the project, encrypted and encrypted, from "Energymac3 srl" dedicated to Macchiareddu to "Energymac4bess srl" intended for batteries for the area close to Monte Arcosu, from "Energyvallermosa2" with the common recipient of the attention reported in full to "Energyut1 Srl", which stands for Uta. A chessboard that goes from north to south of the island with at least three constants: all inactive companies, with capital of ten thousand euros, not always fully paid up, all "encumbered". ” from the State “pledge”, that of Enel Green Power. A “failure” of the Island born in a suburban garage, played out on the upper floors of buildings in Rome.

© Riproduzione riservata