The Insider: The Fifth Service of the FSB recruited Italian politicians from the Lega Nord party
Riga, Latvia (Svidomi) — The Insider publishes another investigation about the recruitment of European politicians by Russian intelligence. This investigation focuses on how the Fifth Service (responsible for foreign relations — ed.) of the Federal Security Service recruited Italian far-right politicians from the the Lega Nord party.
The leadership of the far-right League party, whose head Matteo Salvini is part of the Italian government, had contacts with Russian intelligence services.
The party negotiated funding with employees of the Fifth Service and held secret meetings in Moscow. The meeting took place at the Metropol Hotel in Moscow in October 2018. Matteo Salvini's right-hand man Gianluca Savoini was present too. At the time, Salvini was Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior of Italy, and he is now Minister of Transport. Savoini promised to support Russia and spoke about the common values of the Kremlin and the European far-right.
The Russians and the Lega Nord leaders reached to the agreement: companies affiliated with people from Putin's entourage would transfer €65 million to the party through a fictitious sale of 3 million metric tons of diesel fuel. It is not known whether this agreement was finalized, but, as The Insider found out, in 2018-2019, Savoini and his party colleague Claudio D'Amico flew to Moscow more than once a month, sometimes staying there for only a day, as if they were flying to pick something up.
There were three individuals present at the meetings from the Russian side, two of them were Ilya Yakunin, who was working at the Direct Investment Agency at the time, and Andrey Kharchenko, who had defended his PhD in philosophy and often accompanied the ultraright ideologist Alexandr Dugin (advocated for the necessity of killing Ukrainians — ed.) on foreign trips. Dugin personally met with Savoini, including a month before the meeting at the "Metropol" hotel.
Officially, Andrey Kharchenko works in the office of the assistant to the President of the Russian Federation, Igor Levitin, but extracts from databases indicate that he serves in military unit 26047, which is the Operational Information and International Communications Service of the FSB, known as the Fifth Service of the FSB.
Investigation of the case of international corruption was opened in Italy, after the information about the meeting at the "Metropol" has gone public. However, there were no proof to be found that those, whom Gianluca Savoini met with, were speaking on behalf of the state. But since Andrey Kharchenko has been identified as an active employee of the FSB, the investigation may be reopened.
