He said that Matteo Salvini was “Anti-Semitic and xenophobic”, in Dogliani, during the TV and new media festival in May 2018. Carlo De Benedetti, interviewed by Lilli Gruber, was sued by the leader of the League and a trial for defamation was born . Judge Emanuela Dufour acquitted him “because the fact is not a crime” despite the fact that the prosecutor had asked for the sentence to pay a fine of 800 euros and to compensate the offended party that he had asked for 100 thousand euros.
On that occasion the engineer gave a personal overview of the politics of the moment and Salvini said that “it was the worst” and gave him the epithets of “anti-Semitic and xenophobic”. Among other things, he had declared: “Salvini is anti-European, celebrates Orban in Hungary and is financed by Putin”. The journalist had asked the engineer, and former patron of the Espresso Group, to justify the statements on the League. For De Benedetti that the Carroccio was financed by Putin was “quite a deductible thing.” «Salvini – he said – he paid a visit to Moscow which obviously does not mean being financed, but he also took a stand on the occasion of the raid in Syria in favor of Putin and said that we must leave NATO. These are all things that are difficult to get out of via Bellerio ».
Salvini, heard as a witness in the courtroom, had expressed himself on his personal vision of the right to criticize: «The judgments of a political nature may or may not be there but they are part of the democratic dialectic. I consider the adjective anti-Semitic a heavy infamy, I didn’t accept it then and I don’t accept it now ».
For the prosecutor: “When an appellation is not only offensive but also infamous, it integrates defamation, if any element that supports the truth is missing, as in this case.”
The lawyer of the civil party, Claudio Eccher, added to the dose: “The moment in which these declarations were expressed was particular because the government that was born in June 2018 was being formed, we were in full consultation phase at the Quirinale and the words of De Benedetti had a great diffusion with great damage for my client ».
De Benedetti was assisted by the lawyer Marco Ivaldi and Elisabetta Rubini who produced documents and newspaper articles on Salvini’s statements about Putin and on the fact that in his party there are politicians with a clear anti-Semitic side. The lawyer Ivaldi: “It was a statement of legitimate political criticism and certainly not a personal attack.” The judge’s choice of acquittal will be clearer after the filing of the sentence in 90 days