The Insider: The Fifth Service of the FSB Recruited Italian Politicians from the “League of the North”

The Insider publishes a series of investigations into how the Fifth Service of the FSB recruited European politicians. In particular, the leadership of the Italian party "League of the North", whose leader Matteo Salvini is a member of the Italian government. The party negotiated funding with employees of the Fifth Service and held secret meetings in Moscow. Due to the fact that it was possible to prove the participation of an active FSB employee in these meetings, the investigation of the international corruption case can be resumed in Italy.

The leader of the "League of the North" party, Matteo Salvini, repeatedly called for the lifting of sanctions against Russia, was photographed in a T-shirt with the image of Putin on Red Square, and often visited Moscow. Now he is the deputy prime minister of Italy.

The meeting took place in Moscowʼs "Metropolis" in October 2018. Matteo Salviniʼs right-hand man Gianluca Savoini was there. At the time, Salvini was Italyʼs vice-prime minister and minister of the interior, and now he is the minister of transport. Savoini promised to support Russia and talked about the shared values of the Kremlin and the European far-right.

After negotiations, the parties concluded an agreement — Russian companies connected to Putinʼs entourage transfer €65 million to the "Northern League" through fictitious schemes. It is not known whether this agreement was concluded. However, during 2018-2019, Savoini and his fellow party member Claudio DʼAmico flew to Moscow more than once a month and stayed there for a day. Presumably, they flew in to collect the money.

From the Russian side, there were three people at the meetings, two of them — Ilya Yakunin, who at that time worked at the Direct Investment Agency, and Andriy Kharchenko, who defended his PhD in philosophy and often accompanied the far-right ideologue Oleksandr Dugin on foreign trips. Dugin personally met with Savoini, in particular, a month before the meeting in "Metropolis".

According to the documents, Andriy Kharchenko works in the office of presidential assistant Igor Levitin, but extracts from databases show that he serves in military unit 26047, which is the Service of Operational Information and International Relations of the FSB, known as the Fifth Service.

Italy later found out about the meeting at "Metropolis" and began an investigation into the case of international corruption. However, it was not possible to prove there that those whom Gianluca Savoini met spoke on behalf of the state. But since Andrii Kharchenko was identified as an active employee of the FSB, the investigation can be resumed.

• In the previous series of investigations, journalists found out that Volodymyr Sergienko, an assistant to a deputy of the German parliament from the right-wing populist party "Alternative for Germany" of Eugen Schmidt, could be connected to the Russian special services. Earlier, Der Spiegel and The Insider published an investigation, according to the conclusions of which the Kremlin financed the German far-right party Alternative for Germany.
• Also, in the investigation of the publication The Insider, it was said that the FSB recruited a member of the European Parliament from Latvia, Tatyana Zhdanok. The European Parliament started an investigation against her.