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Berlusconi and Qaddafi Investment Tie Has Been Politicized, Ben Ammar Says
The minority shareholdings of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Fininvest SpA and the Libyan state in a Paris-based film company have been unjustly made the focus of a political dispute, Quinta Communications founder Tarak Ben Ammar said. Libyan Leader Muammar Qaddafi’s Aug. 30 visit to Rome is drawing fire from opposition politicians and rebel lawmakers who abandoned the premier’s party last month. Critics have characterized the meeting as a private business affair rather than a state visit.
“It’s a political battle; I’m in the middle,” Ben Ammar said in a telephone interview from Paris. Fininvest “was a shareholder many, many years before Berlusconi went into politics” and Qaddafi “didn’t even know about it. He found out afterward. The sovereign fund is not Qaddafi.”
Fininvest, first became partners with Ben Ammar in 1990. Now Fininvest owns a 22 percent stake in Quinta Communications through its Luxembourg-based investment company Trefinance SA. In May 2009, a unit of the Libyan Investment Authority bought a 10 percent stake, said Ben Ammar, who owns the remaining 68 percent.
“The country is held hostage by the private business interests of the premier and his family,” Sandro Gozi, a lawmaker in the opposition Democratic Party, said on Aug. 19 about Qaddafi’s visit. Fabio Granata, who abandoned Berlusconi’s party last month, underscored the premier’s conflict of interest.
Investment Tie Denied
Berlusconi on Aug. 20 denied all business links to Qaddafi.
“We repeat, there are no relations whatsoever between the prime minister and the business group he created with President Qaddafi or with the Libyan state,” his office said in a statement.
Fininvest was not in favor of the Libyan investment in Quinta because of possible political fallout, Ben Ammar said.
“Qaddafi is the leader of Libya, and Berlusconi is prime minister, but it’s not a deal made between prime ministers,” Ben Ammar said.
The French-Tunisian financier and a board member of Mediobanca SpA and Telecom Italia SpA, said he wanted Arab investors in Quinta because the strategy of the company is to make more movies about Arab culture. He said he offered to buy out Fininvest’s stake if it opposed Libya’s presence in his company.
Quinta Communications produces and distributes movies. On Sept. 2, the Quinta-produced film “Miral,” directed by Julian Schnabel, will premiere at this year’s Venice Film Festival. Miral is the story of a Palestinian girl growing up in an orphanage in Jerusalem.
To contact the reporter on this story: Steve Scherer in Rome at scherer@bloomberg.net
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