Claims that the nationalist League
party discussed taking funding via oil kickbacks from Russia are
ridiculous, leader Matteo Salvini said Friday.
"It's all ridiculous", he tweeted.
"We never asked for a rouble, a dollar, a gin and tonic, a
doll from ANYONE.
"I respect the work of everyone" Salvini said after Milan
prosecutors opened a probe into Lombardy-Russia Association
President Paolo Savoini who Italian newsweekly L'Espresso and US
news site Buzzfeed say met with two other Italians and three
Russian in a Russian hotel to discuss siphoning off an alleged
65 million euros from oil profits.
Neither media outlet has said they have any proof any
payments went through.
Salvini said "My conscience is clear. I will sue anyone who
links money to the League and Russia".
He said the League's balance sheets "are TRANSPARENT".
Salvini said he had "no problem" with a parliamentary
commission of inquiry into party funding, as requested by the
centre-left opposition Democratic Party (PD).
"Let there be seven or eight of them, we have nothing to
hide," he said.
He added "I'm not going to sue Savoini, but anyone who links
the League to (Russian) money."
"Savoini was not invited by the interior ministry, either to
Moscow in October 2018 or (on July 4) to Villa Madama for the
bilateral meeting with Putin," Salvini said.
Referring to the visit to Moscow, he said "I can produce the
documents of all the passengers who travelled with me. What do I
know what he was doing at the table? Ask him. I'm the interior
minister and I prefer to deal with serious matters.
"This inquiry is ridiculous".
Claudia Echer, Salvini and the League's lawyer, told ANSA
that "Matteo Salvini and the movement he represents will be
safeguarded in all fora".
She said there was a possibility that the League may stand as
civil plaintiff if the investigation into Savoini for alleged
international corruption comes to trial.
Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitri Peskov
told the Interfax news agency Friday that the Buzzfeed expose'
"proves nothing".
"There's nothing there to comment on," he said,
"We have seen the Buzzfed report and we have analysed the
transcription of the conversations, but this does not prove
anything. We see no reason to comment."
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