Naples-Bari high-speed line: the State pays €5.8 billion, and the people who control the building sites can be bought with a panettone
30 September 2026, 18:17
Naples, 29 September. The Guardia di Finanza (Italy's financial police) serves twenty precautionary measures over the works on the Naples-Bari high-speed railway, a project worth €5.8 billion paid for in part with funds from the PNRR, Italy's EU-financed recovery plan. The charge is corruption. According to the Public Prosecutor's Office, a subcontractor paid site managers and purchasing managers at the consortia that won the contracts: cash in Christmas parcels among the panettoni and the biscuits, watches, a ride-on lawnmower, a Porsche lent for the holidays. No one, for now, has been convicted.
In return, again according to the prosecution, came new work awarded directly, competitors' bids known in advance, payments in the fast lane and work booked but never carried out. All for about €61,000 of gifts, one euro for every 95,000 of project. Corruption, it seems, costs less than concrete.
And concrete is the point. Core samples found pours weaker than the design required, and one of the hypotheses is added water. Whoever pays the bribe has to get the money back, and gets it back on the concrete of a railway that high-speed trains will run on.
The bigger problem lies in the chain. The State, through RFI (the state-owned rail network operator), pays for the project but does not choose who actually builds it. That is done by the consortia that won the contract, which hand pieces of the work to other companies. And since 2023 the chain can grow longer still: the new public procurement code allows subcontracts of subcontracts, unless the tender forbids it. Every extra link is one pair of eyes fewer. In the end, whoever decides who gets the work, how much of it has been done and when to pay for it is a private employee, who receives the parcel at Christmas.
It is the block of flats that pays the managing agent to choose the plumber, and the plumber who brings the managing agent a panettone at Christmas. The residents pay the bill, and the pipe leaks all the same.
The Prosecutor's Office says RFI is not involved. Hence the question, for RFI: if it is not involved, who was checking the concrete on its behalf, on a €5.8 billion project, before the financial police did?
The envelope of cash was marked "DURC - contributions in order". A contribution, in fairness, there was.
This article was prompted by a news item published in ANSA on 29 September 2026.