Despite possessing the requisites and skills necessary to hold the position, after having discussed with President Meloni and Vice Presidents Salvini and Tajani, I decided, for reasons of political, institutional and personal expediency, to withdraw my availability. Nuccio Altieri announced this in a note, the day after the Council of Ministers initiated the procedure for his appointment as president of the ANAC. "I thank the Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and the vice-presidents Matteo Salvini and Antonio Tajani for the trust shown in me with the designation as president of the National Anti-Corruption Authority. I am sorry - he explains - for the media attacks and controversies that accompanied this choice, despite my professional career and the experience gained in important institutional and industrial realities".
"The Government reiterates that it has adopted the resolution proposing Trifone Altieri's candidacy for the presidency of the ANAC after having previously assessed and deemed any incompatibility profiles to be non-existent". This was reported by executive sources. The government, the same sources explain, "also specifies that, before proceeding, the two main opposition parties were informed as quickly as possible, without any opposition or reservations being expressed on their part".
It's an Altieri case at Anac. The opposition to Meloni: 'Withdraw the nomination'
(by Paolo Cappelleri)
For the opposition it is an inappropriate designation to say the least, if not tainted by incompatibility. They announce a battle in the parliamentary commissions, where two thirds of the votes will be needed for a favorable opinion on the appointment of the Northern League member Trifone 'Nuccio' Altieri as the new president of the National Anti-Corruption Authority. And, united, in the evening they wrote directly to Giorgia Meloni, asking her to withdraw the nomination for which the CDM had started the procedure 24 hours earlier. The attacks of the centre-left, however, for the moment do not upset the prime minister. "What should I say? - she replied this morning to journalists who asked her about the choice -. Because it was within our competence to do so". "I count on everything to be absolutely regular", is the line of Matteo Salvini, who on 18 September 2024 wanted to entrust the Apulian politician with the role of head of the Defense department of the League.
The appointment of Lega MP Giulio Centemero as Consob commissioner is also harshly criticized, but above all Altieri is in the opposition's sights, having joined the party in 2017 after having played in Forza Italia and having had brief experiences in the Conservatives and Reformists and in the Italian Directorate. League sources, however, explain that he never held the position of defense manager (no longer present in the party's organizational chart), because he immediately communicated to Armando Siri his unavailability to fill it as he was already a member of Leonardo's board of directors. And Siri, coordinator of the departments, certified it in a letter on September 27, specifying that the resolution for the assignment of the role was "to be understood as revoked for all purposes".
The clarification came after accusations from the opposition, ready to cite the law that regulates the appointment of the top of the National Anti-Corruption Authority, now led by the jurist Giuseppe Busia (in charge until the successor is formalized) and before that by the magistrate Raffaele Cantone. The third paragraph of article 13 of Legislative Decree 150 of 27 October 2009 states that "the president and members of the Authority cannot be chosen from among people who hold elective public positions or positions in political parties or trade union organizations or who have held such positions and positions in the three years preceding the appointment and, in any case, must not have interests of any nature in conflict with the functions of the Authority". For Giuseppe Conte, Meloni's "is a serious choice". Beyond belonging to a party, Angelo Bonelli also raises "a second profile, even more serious. The same rule excludes those with interests in conflict with the functions of the Authority. Altieri - he notes - presides over Fincantieri Infrastrutture, a public company that lives on contracts. The controller who comes from the controlled company?".
The meaning of the attacks is then summarized in the letter signed by the group leaders of Pd, M5s, Avs, Italia viva, +Europa, Action to ask Meloni to reverse course and to start "a transparent institutional discussion to identify a figure of high and undisputed institutional profile, to protect the legality and transparency of the country". Because, they state, the Anac "is not an extension of the executive, nor a terrain for the political division of the majority forces" and its nature "requires at the top a figure characterized by unquestionable impartiality, absolute independence from the parties and proven and specific technical competence in the fight against corruption and in the supervision of public contracts". For the opposition parties, "the choice of a profile coming from the active ranks of politics and the government coalition openly contrasts with the independence requirements essential to guarantee the credibility of the Authority, both in front of Italian citizens and in front of the European institutions that monitor the transparency of public procurement and funds".
