I think our Premier should have a long talk with his lawyers and watch his words before proceeding with his announced intention to sue Paolo Guzzanti over the matter of his contacts with the Kgb. It is somewhat funny, at the very least, that Nomisma, Prodi's consulting agency, should have an office in Moscow. No foreign company could even have batted an eyelash without the strict surveillance of, and perhaps good relations with, the Soviet secret service. This is one of the things (and not the only one at that) that can be deduced from the many documents referring to Prodi among the many that were found in the offices of the late Bettino Craxi, documents that are now catalogued and preserved in the archives of the Foundation named after him.

In a memo dedicated to Prodi and De B enedetti [the owner of the now defunct Olivetti Company and the main shareholder of Italian daily "la Repubblica"] it says that "both of them had big interests in the USSR. De Benedetti fitted up Novosti, which is considered an agency of the Kgb, with its computer network technology. De Benedetti also provided strategic material to the Soviet war industry, amid protests from NATO and its technical and strategic branch, COCOM [....] As a consultant of the Kremlin, Prodi's company had its address in Moscow, c/o a department of the Soviet government".

From this it would seem that Nomisma's task was to pave the way and act as consultant for De Benedetti's business in the USSR. There is also a document that specifies this business.

The file on De Benedetti in the USSR. "De Benedetti, Breznev, Andropov, Cernencko: end of the 1970s, beginning of the 1980s, a big order for the supply of computers to Novosti. To say Novosti is tantamount to saying Kgb, so much so that in the entire structure, both internal and external, the deputy chiefs of each sector are all officials from the Lubjanka . At the time, the Olivetti Company was considered particularly good friends with the Soviet Union, according to the testimony of KGB general Oleg Kalughin (...) besides installing the computer network, for Novosti, hence for Tass and for Aeroflot, there is the matter of the Elektronmash Factory of Leningrad (1982-1985) for the reproduction of microchips. Olivetti saw to setting up the Soviet company Elektronmash, despite the strict rules of the NATO Committee prohibiting the sale of advanced technology to the USSR.

Perhaps due to some non-fulfilment of the terms of the contract on the part of Olivetti, Elektronmash never worked and De Benedetti lost $200 million on it which he never recovered [...] NATO brought proceedings against Olivetti for having violated COCOM rules on advanced technology. The Andreotti administration stepped in to settle the case with the Americans".
Singular, isn't it, that the first venture should be installing a computer network at Novosti, the Kgb agency that dictated the right policies to Soviet Union's two main daily newspapers, Pravda (truth) and Izvestia (news), the duo which gave rise to the saying "truth has no news and the news has no truth".

The document just quoted might make one think that the "gift" (almost free) of the [state-owned] SME Company, promised to De Benedetti by Prodi when he was the President of [Italy's public holding company] IRI, was a way of making up for the failure of the Elektronmesh operation.

All this would seem to be confirmed by a " strange" attitude on the part of Prodi, namely the position he took when a coup overthrew Gorbachev in August of 1991. Prodi proclaimed himself in favor of the perpetrators of the coup, a position he took all by himself, because on that occasion the [ex-Communist] Democratic Party of the Left, together with the Socialist Party, denounced the coup. In the next file, "Remembering the Coup", Craxi affirms: under the letter "P" and the nome Prodi "I have come across a clipping from the Corriere della Sera of August 20th 1991: incredibily, one of the first people to accept the coup in the USSR on August 19th, without a trace of indignation or emotion, was not the DPL, which on that occasion got the SP to sign on to a joint communiqué voicing protest and alarm, but Romano Prodi. Prodi, the advisor of Soros (the American financier who in a matter of weeks reaped a profit of 450 billion in the speculative attack on the Italian lira), who under Gorbachev appears to also have been an advisor of official Soviet entities.

In any case, Prodi also had excellent relationships with the people who organized the coup. One of these was actually Valentin Pavlov, then Prime Minister of the Soviet Union, a member of the "Committee" that overthrew Gorbachev.

WIth the coup going on in Moscow, people were surprised to read the following enlightening statement by Prodi: "I know Pavlov well [...] I would say that in a certain sense what he has done in these hours is a consistent choice. I expect him to take decisive steps over the next few days in the matter of running the economy".

It reads like a joke. It was a joke. How could there possibly be tanks surrounding the Parliament building in Moscow, with the authors of the coup decreeing a 6-month state of emergency, and here was Prodi emphasizing how "consistent" these people were, and expressing his hopes for "decisive steps" to be taken "in the next few days" for the running of the economy? At cannon shot.

Anyone happening to rely on his word would have had to think that nothing much at all was going on in Moscow. Indeed Prodi, who "knows Pavlov well" (Pavlov was to be arrested and then pardoned by Parliament [....]) also did his best to calm public opinion in Italy, with a rather explicit statement. He told the Italians that there was nothing at all to be worried about, since in the USSR life was as normal. "The telex we received this morning from our office [Nominsma's Moscow branch] is clear. The academic year, scheduled to be inaugurated today, has begun as planned". In other words: let's not overdo it with this thing about a coup, life in Moscow goes on.

Was this a clever move on the part of a businessman who had no idea what turn the events might take, or a statement made necessary by ties to the authors of the coup, or what?

Prodi's statements do not end there. In the Corriere he goes on to prophesize: "I don't think we should expect an insurgency of the people in favour of Gorbachev (...) and according to our analysts, not even Boris Eltsin, who is much more popular, can avail himself of a network capable of promoting an uprising". One wonders who Prodi's crazy analysts may have been.

If it was he who was doing the analyzing, we should be told whom he was working for: we wouldn't want the analysis be the product of another sceance, would we?

Stefania Craxi*
Il Giornale (13.XII.2006)

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*Stefania Craxi, Member of the Italian Parliament, daughter of late Prime Minister Bettino Craxi (1983-1987)