Thread by @BuzzFeedNews

Italy’s deputy PM Matteo Salvini is Europe’s most powerful far-right leader.

We have an explosive recording of Russian operatives and one of Salvini’s aides negotiating a deal to siphon money from a billion-dollar oil deal into Salvini’s far-right party.
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To understand this story, you need to understand that Salvini is the face of resurgent far-right politics in Europe, and the symbol of anti-immigration in Italy.

He has also been a vocal supporter of Vladimir Putin, advocating for the European Union to drop its Russia sanctions.

Six men — 3 Russians, 3 Italians — gathered in the iconic Metropol hotel, nominally to discuss an oil deal.

In the recording, they can be heard negotiating a deal to covertly channel tens of millions of dollars of Russian oil money to Salvini’s party.
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One of those men, Gianluca Savoini, is a long time close aide of Salvini’s. He can be heard saying: “We want to change Europe. A new Europe has to be close to Russia as before because we want our sovereignty.”

The suggestion that Russian transactions with far-right leaders had hidden political purpose haunts European politics.

For example, Marine Le Pen took €11 million of loans from Russian banks shortly after backing Putin’s annexation of Crimea. She insists the deal was commercial

Now, the Metropol tape provides the first hard evidence of Russia’s clandestine attempts to fund Europe’s nationalist movements, and the apparent complicity of some senior figures from the nationalist far-right in those attempts.
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In the tapes, the Russian operatives can be heard describing Salvini, who is also Italy’s interior minister, as the “head” of Europe’s resurgent ultra-right nationalist movements, stretching from Italy in the south to Sweden and Finland in the north.
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It’s unclear whether the agreement negotiated at the Metropol was ever executed, nor if Salvini’s party received any funding — but the existence of the recording of a detailed negotiation raises serious questions about whether Italian laws were broken.
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Russia’s sphere of influence across Europe continues to expand. This is a clear look into how it happens.

Listen to the explosive Metropol tape for an inside look on Russia’s secretive attempts to support nationalist movements in Europe.
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