L'Espresso with an article by Paolo Biondani and Stefano Vergine reports the investigation by the French police on Julienne Sassou Nguesso, daughter of the Congolese dictator former general Denis Sassou Nguesso, and the irruption in the villa of the treasurer of the regime, Hubert Pendino. Apparently the name of ENI's wife of DeI De Scalzi, Marie Madeleine Ingoba Descalzi, would have come out of the examination of the documents of the transalpine investigation.
"In the villa of the presumed treasurer-recycler of the regime, accused of having reinvested in France hundreds of millions stolen from the poor population of the Republic of Congo, the gendarmes of Paris have seized a very confidential archive: foreign accounts, real estate, offshore company records. And in those papers they also found a name that calls into question Italy: Marie Madeleine Ingoba Descalzi, the wife of the CEO of ENI. The largest Italian public company, which has strong interests in the oil and gas fields of the former French colony, with the capital Brazzaville, where former general Denis Sassou Nguesso, who came to power in the distant 1979, is president for life. Mister laundering, miss Congo and lady Eni. Among the investigators are so called the three alleged owners of a mysterious company on the island of Mauritius emerged with the search ordered by the investigating judges of Paris. The company is called African Beer Investment Ltd and is a full-fledged offshore: it can handle business all over the world ("global business"), but is based in that Indian Ocean archipelago where, as the local professionals write, « the maximum tax is three percent ». A tax haven. The other advantage is anonymity; the names of the shareholders are not public and neither are the financial statements. The recorded deeds only say that it is a company set up in July 2012 in a skyscraper in Ebene, the most modern city in the country, and which is still active. The names of the alleged owners are obtained only from the investigation of the French police, who identified them as follows: Julienne Sassou Nguesso, the favorite daughter of the president, the master of the Congo; Hubert Pendino, a very rich businessman and a suspect manager of the dictator's treasures; and Mrs. Ingoba Descalzi, who is a Congolese citizen and met her husband when the Italian manager led the Eni branch in that African nation. In Paris, the magistracy investigates hundreds of millions of dollars from the state coffers of the Congo and reinvested in France to buy dozens of villas, apartments and luxury hotels. The maxi-investigation, called "Biens mal acquis" (illicitly purchased goods), concerns the circle of the president. In June 2017 the investigation also involved his daughter, Julienne Sassou Nguesso, 50 years, and her husband, Guy Johnson, accused of recycling and subtraction of public funds for tens of millions, transferred to Europe through Hong Kong-based offshore companies , Seychelles and Mauritius. In the Republic of Congo (formerly the French Congo), according to the UN, half of the population lives with one euro a day. Hubert Pendino is a close friend of President Sassou Nguesso and is the richest of his alleged "nominees", as the French judges call him. In the former French Congo officially controls the Socofran, a large enterprise that has made major public works, under state concession, and recently obtained private contracts also from companies owned by Eni, as the works by 40 million dollars for construction of an electric megacentrale (Cec). In addition to Socofran, Pendino in the Congo has a real estate empire and is also a shareholder and president of a bank.
French, according to the judges, document its secret role as manager of dozens of offshore used to buy rich real estate assets for the daughter and other family members of the president. In these weeks the investigations have recorded dramatic developments. In September, two former agents of the French foreign secret services (Dsge) were indicted on charges of planning to assassinate the Congolese opposition leader, former General Ferdinand Mbaou, who has been exiled to France for years a committee against the dictatorship that has also denounced the corruption of the Sassou Nguesso regime, setting in motion the investigation "Bien mal acquis" Denied the murder, the two former French 007 are now accused of criminal association and detention of explosives. For years, Eni is the most important multinational in the French Congo: the Italian group extracts about a third of all local oil and controls many rich gas fields. The managing director Claudio Descalzi began his career right here, becoming the director of Eni Congo in the 1994. Appointed head of the state group in the 2014 by the Renzi government, after the elections he found the support of the League. Unlike his predecessor, Paolo Scaroni, designated by Berlusconi, Descalzi has always worked for Eni as a technician and has never been convicted of corruption. Today one of the executives accused in Milan of having authorized an alleged maxi-bribe in Nigeria, which dates back to the 2011, when the group was still led by Scaroni. Recently, the Milan Public Prosecutor's Office has also opened an investigation into the Congo, hypothesizing that another top manager of ENI, Roberto Casula, has registered millionaires of a deposit (through other offshore) to one of his friend and alleged figureheads. Descalzi has never been accused of personally collecting money. In no Italian investigation had ever appeared the anonymous company of Mauritius that, according to French investigators, unites the wife of the number one of Eni with the daughter and the treasurer of the Congolese president. African Beer seems to manage activities in line with the name: breweries. In the cards seized in Pendino there are also requests for purchase of machinery for breweries. The same presumed treasurer of the regime, again according to the French investigations, also managed offshore that has signed rich contracts with Eni. The Italian group states in its financial statements, in particular, that it has bought a portion of a deposit in the Congo, in the 2009, from a company called Courrat, without further details. The full name is Courrat Assets Incorporated: it is an offshore Panama. The papers of the Mossack Fonseca studio, published by the Icij journalistic consortium, show that the owner has claimed to remain anonymous even in Panama. Now the acts seized on the French Riviera have convinced the French investigators that the dominus of the Courrat is precisely Pendino. Eni in the Congo has obtained shares in another oil block with a different transaction, that is buying the company that owns it: an offshore of the Bahamas, named Zetah Kouilou Ltd. A purchase regularly reported in Italian financial statements. Before passing under Eni, the Bahamas company was also managed by the Mossack Fonseca studio in Panama. And even in this case the owner had not been identified. ".