Santanchè, the government gives the ok to the agenda of the Pd which would commit it to sanction it for Visibilia-Corriere.it

The government he gave favorable opinion on an agenda of the Pd to the work decree, presented in the Chamber, which commits the executive «to sanction operators who had fraudulently used” the Covid redundancy fund, among which it is explicitly mentioned, “Visibilia Publishera company listed on the Stock Exchange, at the time controlled with 48.6 percent of the shares by the Senator Santanchè».

The agenda at first signature of Clare Gribaudo
states, in the introduction, that “during the dramatic phase of the pandemic, the State had to prepare a wide range of extraordinary measures to support the economy, largely paralyzed by the need to prevent the spread of COVID-19, with the deployment of huge financial resources charged to the public budget; as also emerged in the early stages of implementation of these extraordinary measures, there was no shortage regrettable cases of improper, even fraudulent use, of said provisions; in particular, many reports concerned the benefit of extraordinary Covid fund ». Several companies, it continues, “used the extraordinary Covid fund even without having experienced contractions in the activities and others even used the fund by continuing to employ their employees in the ordinary performance of their work”.

Here comes the decisive point on Visibilia: «According to what was reported in some newspaper articles last November and according to what emerged from the recent journalistic investigation carried out by the television program Report, among the companies that allegedly improperly received the extraordinary Covid fund, without being entitled to it and continuing to make its staff work, it would also fall there Visibilia Publisher”, a company listed on the Stock Exchange, at the time controlled with 48.6 percent of the shares by Senator Santanchè; according to some documents collected by a specific investigation by Consob, it would appear that several workers, even with apical roles, would never have been informed of their placement in layoffs, even at zero hours, and would never have stopped working.

If confirmed, continues the agenda which received the go-ahead from the government, «these events would highlight conduct that is seriously harmful to workers’ rights and a substantial illegitimate use of extraordinary tools to support workers’ income during the pandemic; according to a study by the parliamentary budget office, in the year 2020 the percentage of hours used for Covid, without a drop in turnover, was estimated at 27 percent, corresponding to around 2.7 billion euros of expenditure that could have been saved in the presence of correct behavior.

The agenda, at this point, «commits the government to adopt any useful initiative in order to strengthen the controls on the appropriate use of the extraordinary Covid fund, as well as the other provisions envisaged during the pandemic phase, and to sanction the operators who had used it fraudulently, recovering the unlawfully received amounts with the utmost promptness».

Undersecretary Maria Teresa Bellucci (Fdi) gave a favorable opinion on behalf of the government.

Article being updated…

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