MOSCOW, February 24./TASS/. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak has never met with Italian counterpart Matteo Salvini and has held no talks with him, media allegations about this are untrue, Kozak’s Spokesman Ilya Dzhus told reporters on Sunday.
Earlier on Sunday, the Italian L’Espresso weekly published a report maintaining that Salvini had visited Russia to hold ‘secret negotiations’ to get financial backing for the League party he leads. In particular, the weekly maintained that Salvini had met with Kozak incognito.
"The so-called investigation by the Italian L’Espresso is based on unsubstantiated conjectures, which does no credit to the edition. Kozak has never been acquainted with Mr. Salvini personally, they haven’t met either officially or ‘secretly’, they have never met up for a cup of espresso in this or that office," the spokesman said.
"Russia and Italy have a big section of bilateral economic cooperation, including in the energy and industry sectors. As a field-oriented prime minister, Kozak concentrates only on this agenda," Dzhus said.
The story in L’Espresso was summarized on Friday by the Italian La Stampa newspaper, which is part of the same publishing house. It maintained that financial aid had been formalized as a fuel sale deal with Russia’s oil giant Rosneft, the funds from which - about 3 million euros - were received by the League to finance the campaign at the elections to the European Parliament.
The party told TASS on Saturday that Salvini is not planning to comment on the weekly’s story not to "spend time on refuting absolutely absurd and unsubstantiated speculations of journalists".
Rosneft demanded that the Italian La Stampa refute the article.
"The article 'Three Millions for the League of the North for the European elections with Russian fuel supplies' published in the La Stampa newspaper on February 22, states that Rosneft may be involved in financing the League of the North election campaign in the European Parliament.
In addition, Rosneft appealed to the editor of La Stampa with the requirement to immediately refute "the misinformation contained in this article, in case of refusal, it intends to defend its rights in court." On Saturday, La Stampa published a statement by the Russian company which said the information in the story relating Rosneft "is completely untrue, it is a lie, with the aim of harming the company's business reputation".
L'Espresso has already published accusatory inquiries about the Russian financing of the League, whose leader, Vice Premier and Italian Minister of the Interior Matteo Salvini, has always defended the need to lift sanctions and strengthen relations with the Russian Federation. Salvini repeatedly denied these assumptions. The "League" signed a memorandum of cooperation with the "United Russia".