Ten billion in debt and the environment the bombshells on the relaunch of the former Ilva

There is the death of the workers. And there is the agony of the former Ilva. Out of respect for those who work in the steelworks and for those who manage one of the most complicated and dramatic dossiers in Italian history, it is necessary to start again, with rationality and measure, from numbers and certain elements. Last week's decision by the court in Milan, which reactivated the judicial mortgage for a rapid closure of the full cycle, made Flacks ask for a further criminal shield in addition to the one cancelled by the Five Star-Lega government led by Giuseppe Conte (with Luigi Di Maio as the technical author of the initiative) and already restored by Giorgia Meloni's government. It was precisely the Milan court's decision that helped to clarify the obvious gracelessness of Flacks, an investor to whom the former minister of industry, Adolfo Urso, had for a long time looked with conviction, unlike the rest of the government and even part of the structures of the old ministry of industry. The tender was not cancelled by the commissioners. But whether Flacks stays or leaves the field, there are structural knots that - in the perfect storm of court rulings and work-related deaths - remain.

The Credit Bomb

Ilva in extraordinary administration, which came into being in January 2015, has debts of six billion euro in its belly, some of which belong to the Mef and the Ministry of the Environment. There are loans from the Mef and there are penalties and compensation from the Ministry of the Environment for past environmental damage. If Flacks calls it quits or goes ahead and then proves unable to manage the former Ilva, this hole will go directly into Italia's public debt. So, there are the debts in the belly of Acciaierie d'Italia in extraordinary administration, the operating company created in 2024. The procedure underway at the court in Milan is worth EUR 4.59 billion. In the more than four billion, there are one billion in debts to suppliers and 697 million in financial debts. On the other hand, current debts, not those of a bankruptcy nature, amounted to 1.856 billion in June, of which 1.339 billion recognised as predeductible. Beyond the technicalities and nominalisms, the real issue, which must concern everyone - public account managers, bankers and industrial creditors - is that debts are either paid or they are not paid. If Flacks disappears or if Flacks does not show itself capable of managing Ilva's techno-industrial and financial-capital mechanism, a bombshell effect will quickly be triggered, first on those who put up guarantees and counter-guarantees (Sace and Medio Credito Centrale in the first place), then on industrial creditors and finally on public accounts. Six billion euro plus four and a half billion euro: over ten billion euro in total debt.

The issue of factory reclamation