Milan Cortina 2026 Olympics, clash between government and magistrates

Clash between the government and the Milan public prosecutor's office over the Milan-Cortina 2026 Foundation, the managing body of the Winter Olympics. The public prosecutor's office considers a law that intervenes to block criminal proceedings in progress to be 'of unprecedented gravity'. And in the meantime, the investigation's papers would reveal an alleged system of increasingly widespread corruption.

A month ago, a decree-law essentially attempted to 'save' the Olympic body from the investigations launched by the Milanese judiciary, which is contesting the crimes of corruption and bid-rigging against the previous CEO Vincenzo Novari and two other professionals. The rule reiterates - after a previous decree approved in 2020, and already contested by the prosecutors - that the Foundation has a private nature, ergo: the charges of corruption and bid-rigging cannot be sustained. This is the government's argument. But yesterday, during the hearing at the Re-examination Court, to which one of the suspects, manager Massimiliano Zuco, appealed against the seizure, the prosecutors expressed their views harshly: 'illegitimate intervention' and 'of an unprecedented gravity', which wants to take away the judiciary's 'prerogative' of interpreting laws. This was supported by the Siciliano addition together with the prosecutor Alessandro Gobbis.

The decision of the Re-examination Court is awaited by all: it is the first judge to intervene to support or not support the prosecution's thesis. Initial evidence, reading the investigation papers, shows that the Foundation would indeed have a public nature, as the prosecutors claim (referring mainly to the fact that financial guarantees are provided by the government and local authorities).

As we read in a report by the Milan Gdf's economic and financial unit, 'for the top management and staff delegated to manage the various divisions of the organisation (technological administrative, etc.), the Foundation, although constituted ex lege as a private law body, appears - according to their own qualified judgement - to be an organisation equivalent to a Public Administration'. And the first to argue this is the Foundation's own lawyer, Pietro Fea, in a conversation on 29 April with the head of the technology sector, Marco Moretti: 'it is, however, an activity of national interest, er... however much we insist on saying that we do not pursue the general interest'.

The interceptions reported in the reports (at least two, one from the beginning of the year and one from last April) would not only reveal the public nature of the organisation, but also extend the spotlight of the investigation to the new management, that of the current CEO Andrea Varnier, who took over from Novari two years ago.