Members of the far-right Italian party Northern League, including its leader Matteo Salvini, flew to Moscow in 2018-2019 and met with current FSB Fifth Service officer Andrei Kharchenko, journalists from The Insider found out.
One of the meetings took place on October 18, 2018 in the Moscow Metropol. It was attended by Gianluca Savoini, Salvini’s assistant (then the leader of the Northern League was Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Internal Affairs of Italy, now he heads the Ministry of Transport).
At that meeting, Savoni promised to provide support to Russia and discussed “financing schemes.” An audio recording of the negotiations was later obtained by BuzzFeed. As L'Espresso wrote, during the conversation a deal was concluded according to which Russian companies associated with Putin’s friends were to transfer 65 million euros to structures close to Salvini through the fictitious sale of 3 million tons of diesel fuel.
Whether this deal took place is unknown, but after the meeting at the hotel, The Insider claims, Savoini and his party mate Claudio D’Amico began flying to Moscow more than once a month.
The names of two of the three Russian participants in the conversation at Metropol have been known to investigators since 2019, but the identity of the third has only now become known. It turned out to be Alexander Kharchenko, a friend of the far-right philosopher Alexander Dugin.
The Insider found out that formally Kharchenko performs all tasks and goes on business trips in the status of an employee of the apparatus of Putin’s assistant Igor Levitin. For example, in November 2023, he attended Levitin’s meeting with the Prime Minister of Iraq. At the same time, extracts from databases show that Kharchenko serves in Fifth Service of the FSB.
The Insider notes that after publications about the meeting at the Metropol, an investigation into international corruption began in Italy, but then it did not develop because it could not be proven that Savoini’s interlocutors “spoke on behalf of the state.”
Earlier, The Insider and Spiegel talked about Vladimir Sergienko, an assistant to German MP Evgeniy Schmidt from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. According to publications, he coordinated the texts of speeches by AfD deputies with an officer of the Fifth Service of the FSB, Colonel Ilya Vechtomov. After this information was made public, Sergeenko left his position.
According to another investigation by The Insider, member of the European Parliament from Latvia Tatyana Zhdanok also communicated with FSB officers and helped one of them get a visa to Europe.