In full government crisis, Matteo Renzi flies to Riyadh for a 20-minute conference. He is on the board of a Saudi institution that promoted the event

For a month and a half he ventilated, threatened, and then got the government crisis. But in recent days, just as things have gotten difficult for the country, with the prime minister Giuseppe Conte one step away from resignation and the election risk in full pandemic increasingly concrete, Matteo Renzi flew in Saudi Arabia to participate in an international event. He reveals it Emiliano Fittipaldi on the newspaper Tomorrow, claiming that the leader of Italy alive sits inadvisory board of the government body that organized the initiative. An appointment that according to the newspaper would guarantee him “up to 80 thousand dollars a year“If it participated in all meetings on the calendar. After that yesterday the premier announced his intention to go up to Quirinale to resign his mandate, however, Renzi had to hurry back tonight to Roma. The program provided that he participated in the two days organized by FII Institute, a body controlled by the Saudi sovereign fund, on innovation issues in the post-pandemic world. Not just as a speaker for an intervention yes 20 minutes – lecturing is among the most profitable in his 2019 tax return – but, in fact, also as a member of the advisory committee of the institution.

The flight to Riyadh was also confirmed by his staff, who in a note explains the circumstances of the trip: “Matteo Renzi was not in Ryad ‘for a 50,000 euro conference’ but for a international event in which many exponents of the world of finance, innovation, world politics, organized by the PIF Fund, have participated for years ”. Further details can be read on the FII Institute website, where the senator of Rignano appears among several speaker, tra cui Anand Mahindra, Jean Todt, the CEO of Goldman Sachs David M. Solomon, Jean-Bernard Lévy. According to the program of the event, Renzi should have spoken on the evening of January 28, from 8.30 to 8.50, during a conference titled “Redefining Leadership for the Post-Covid Era: How to Inspire an Economic Renaissance in the 21st Century”. Next to his name there is also the formal confirmation of a role he holds within the government body: “Board of Trustees Member”. The newspaper Tomorrow claims that Renzi will still participate in the Saudi event, by connecting remotely like so many other speakers, and should equally take “the attendance fee guaranteed by the contract ”(the conference, on the other hand, is done free of charge). All while the head of state called the consultations and his party, Italia viva, is expected at the Quirinale on Thursday at 17.30.

The assignment for the FII Institute – an organization that according to the journalist Fittipaldi Renzi has been attending since 2017 – is therefore added to the many other lecturing activities that the former premier has carried out since leaving Palazzo Chigi. According to the latest tax return published recently on Senate website, it appears that in 2019 he collected one million, 92 thousand and 131 euros and paid 425 thousand and 655 euros in taxes. A large chunk comes from the events in which he participates around the world: in January two years ago he was in New York for Goldman Sachs, then again in Riyadh for the Saudi Commission for Tourism. In March he landed in the Emirates for two events and returned to London on behalf of Algebris. In the same year another visit to the capital of Saudi Arabia makes for the Financial Sector Conference. In May he goes to the Swiss Economic Forum in Interlaken and to Astana in Kazakhstan for the 12th Economic Forum. Then there are the invitations in China, in Seoul, in Athens. All events that accompanied his political activity, the last act of which was the withdrawal of the delegation of Italy alive from yellow and red government.

The trip to the Middle East also explains the media silence behind which Renzi has entrenched himself in the last few days, after weeks of attendance in the television lounges, in the news and in the main newspapers. While Pd, Movimento 5 stelle and Leu were committed to the end to avoid the fall of the executive, which then materialized suddenly between 25 and 26 January, he sent his men forward to try to manage the situation, amid calls for a renewed “dialogue”And attempts to break free from the accusations of having opened a crisis in the middle of a pandemic. Only today the leader of IV, returning from Riyadh, wrote a new one e-news. “The President Conte took note of not having the numbers and resigned,” he writes. “After days of mud against us, everything is clearer. It is not Italia Viva that has opened a crisis: Italy is facing a crisis that will shake your wrists “. Then he returns to issues already addressed since he triggered the tear with the majority: “We are among the worst in the world as GDP in 2020, as a population / deaths for Covid, as the number of school days lost by children “. In his opinion, this is why it must be done “what the country needs, to its teachers, its workers, its young people: a serious government, of the legislature, which gives concrete and non-evasive answers to the dramatic challenges of the pandemic ”. Then the promise: “We will go to the Quirinale without prejudices. For us, the priority is to help citizens get out of this stalemate and not only economic difficulty. Wasting Recovery Money, waste time on vaccines, delaying the return to school, living on subsidies would be unforgivable mistakes“.

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