by Gerardo Giovagnoli (PSD)
I want to thank Sonia Tura for bringing the Varano investigation back into the spotlight; her article prompted me to write on the subject.
Looking back at the beginning of this affair, a series of images came to mind. Driven by a desire to dig deeper — matched only by a certain masochistic streak — I rewatched the episodes of Report from fifteen years ago dedicated to the Varano investigation, the one that ensnared Delta, and by extension Carisp.
How many inaccuracies there were, even in describing public and trivial facts about our country: “the official language is Italian, the spoken language is the Romagnolo dialect” (1) — something which, within a few years, no one will even remember anymore — or “in 2001 San Marino’s banks collected €9 billion a year, and €14 billion in 2007” (1) — one might say “if only,” given that both figures actually referred to total deposits, not annual ones — or again “Delta had €4 billion in debts (3) and “the San Marino state put all its money into that bank (Carisp)” (3).
If this is the level of accuracy on display, one has to wonder: on Report — as, quite possibly, on other investigative programmes — truth and its representation are worlds apart, and in our case, they are miles apart.
The opening episode, the longest of the series, began with footage of the arrests of Delta’s and Carisp’s top executives, carried out on 3 May 2009, accompanied by the customary soundtrack and suggestive commentary — “suggestive” in the sense lawyers use the word.
The Varano investigation erupted after the stalemate that followed the initial operation — the seizure of the cash-transport van on 5 June 2008 — which was overturned by the Court of Cassation that December.
I won’t retrace the entire history of Delta and Cassa di Risparmio before and after those events, since it was already examined by a Council Commission of Inquiry which I chaired: in 2015 it produced a Final Report that I still consider valid today (https://l1nq.com/5l0o5ig).
And yet, at the time, that report could only speculate about what would actually happen: that the judicial case of the century for the Republic of San Marino would not lead to convictions on the long list of charges drawn up in 2009.
The fundamental point I want to make is that the action of the Forlì Public Prosecutor’s Office, through prosecutors Di Vizio and Forte, created — in synergy with the media, as demonstrated by Report among others, and with the Bank of Italy — an unassailable prosecutorial narrative that turned into a trial and a conviction handed down well before the trial itself ever took place (indeed, before it failed to take place at all).
Certainly, the Italian government did nothing to get in the way either — we all remember, with some irritation, how then-Finance Minister Tremonti treated us during a joint press conference with the then Secretaries of State Gabriele Gatti and Antonella Mularoni, at the 2009 Rimini Meeting (https://youtu.be/b_JMr6zxbms?si=UplEiD7aa-T4K5GF).
The power wielded by the prosecutor’s office and the Bank of Italy, in fact, was not limited to investigating and containing offences that still had to be proven; it extended to operational, binding, unappealable measures — the special administration imposed on Delta and the removal of Carisp from every operational lever within the group. This soon led to the severing of every remaining tie between our financial system and Italy’s: farewell to Unicredit’s stake in BAC, farewell to Carim’s stake in CIS.
In short, in just a few months, between 2009 and 2011, an investigation without a trial had already handed down and enforced its verdict: San Marino was laundering Italian black money, illegitimately controlling banking institutions in Italy, and had to be placed in quarantine.
To be fair, there were plenty of valid reasons for Italy to hold a grudge: first and foremost, the refusal to sign the 2005 Agreement, which I have already discussed in this newspaper (https://insider.sm/si-sblocca-la-firma-dellaccordo-di-associazione-e-la-riparazione-dellerrore-catastrofico-del-2005/); an opaque banking and corporate model, built on anonymous companies and banking secrecy, with no mechanism whatsoever for exchanging information — while it was widely known that many Italians used our banks as a laundromat. Another significant vulnerability was the fact that Carisp had a monstrous exposure to Delta, amounting to €2.7 billion — virtually all of the bank’s liquidity was being funnelled into that one company (page 49 of the Final Report). It is also worth noting that after May 2009, various San Marino powers, instead of closing ranks, chose to fight each other, playing directly into the hands of our accusers. Take Gabriele Gatti, for example: “The Commission considers Gabriele Gatti’s conduct towards the Forlì Public Prosecutor’s Office to have been contrary to the interests of Cassa di Risparmio and of the Republic of San Marino” (page 49 of the Final Report). Another example: the baseless accusations against the head of the Central Bank’s Supervisory Department, Caringi, and his subsequent removal, which also led to the resignations of Governor Bossone and Director Papi — precisely at the height of the acute crisis in external relations and domestic liquidity.
All true, but.
But there were many ways, even assertive ones, to force us to change course without demolishing a valuable company like Delta and ruining several people’s lives.
It is worth remembering that while it was Cassa di Risparmio and the state that paid the price, it was people who suffered — in particular the five individuals arrested on that 3 May 2009: Mario Fantini, CEO of Carisp and Chairman of Delta; Gilberto Ghiotti, Chairman of Carisp; Paola Stanzani, Vice-Chair of Delta; Luca Simoni, Director of Carisp; and Gianluca Ghini, Director of Carifin.
All of them were hit hard, many irreparably in professional terms — Fantini, in all likelihood, physically as well, given his death in March 2011. Only Luca Simoni returned to his role as Director in 2013, but only after enduring an ordeal he himself has described (4). Gilberto Ghiotti, the only San Marino national among the five, and also almost certainly the one with the least operational responsibility, found no redress at home and likewise described the damage he suffered in two interviews, one from 2021 (5) and one from 2025 (6). I recommend all three pieces, which make clear the destructive nature of the 2009 prosecutorial edifice.
What was that edifice built on?
Among the many accusations levelled by the Varano investigation, one particular lever was used by Di Vizio to strike at us: the alleged invalidity of the numerical code used by the Italian banking system to identify San Marino banks, which were treated as equivalent to European ones, along with the claim that an unjustified flood of cash was arriving from the Bank of Italy.
This was the basis for the request to seize €2.6 million from the 2008 cash-transport van, but above all for the claim that Delta was being used for large-scale money laundering, and that there was undue San Marino control over that group, which was headquartered in Bologna.
The lever used was fundamentally improper: it should not have struck only at Carisp, but at the Bank of Italy as well.
Because if — and I stress if — a numerical code was wrong, the fault lay not with us, but with whoever had assigned it many years earlier and had never bothered to change it.
If so much cash was arriving in the Republic, it was not being smuggled in overnight by thieves; rather it was the result of long-established practices, sanctioned by the Bank of Italy through MPS’s Forlì branch, and finally transported to San Marino via certified security couriers. This is even acknowledged in one of the Report episodes (2).
In short, if the crux of the Varano investigation was that errors had been found in the interface with San Marino, responsibility for those errors lay chiefly with the Bank of Italy.
If Cassa di Risparmio’s control over Delta was the issue, all that was needed was a corporate restructuring measure. If the goal was something bigger still — forcing us to abandon the system of anonymous holdings — what was already underway was enough: inclusion on Italy’s grey or black lists, and on those of Moneyval and the OECD.
If the goal was to root out one of the main problems at its source — Italian tax evasion — then the outcome has been an utter failure.
At this point, I cannot help but recall that the scale of our banking and financial system — which appeared oversized (12 banks and 63 financial companies for 61 square kilometres and 32,000 inhabitants at the time) — actually attracted relatively little money, at most around €15 billion in total deposits. To get a sense of how much Italian capital was sitting in the coffers of other countries, one need only look at the figures from Italy’s tax amnesty (“scudo fiscale”): reports from February 2010, right at the height of the assault on San Marino, showed that €3.8 billion flowed back to Italy from San Marino, €4.1 billion from Monaco, €7.3 billion from Luxembourg, and a staggering €60 billion from Switzerland.
And yet, none of the less damaging alternatives were ever pursued, and by acting as it did, the prosecutor’s office and the Bank of Italy wiped out roughly one billion euros in value for San Marino, along with a company that was performing extremely well, Delta, and all its subsidiaries, and more than 900 jobs. In Italy.
END OF PART ONE
The second part of this article will be published on Insider.sm in the coming days
____________________________________________
References:
1 https://www.raiplay.it/video/2009/05/Il-re-e-nero-faee14bf-cf48-4e5e-aef5-8a991c3d4c1a.html
