GENOA (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 15th June, 2020) Allegations that Italy's Five Star Movement (M5S) has been financed by the Venezuelan leadership constitute a defamation campaign, but it is also an opportunity for the party to reiterate that the Venezuelan crisis should be settled through dialogue, Vito Petrocelli, a party member and the head of the Italian upper house's foreign affairs commission, said in a statement on Monday.
Earlier in the day, Spanish daily ABC reported, citing what it says is a leaked Venezuelan intelligence memo, that the M5S received 3.5 million Euros ($3.9 million) in cash from the Bolivarian republic in 2010. The secret cash transfer via diplomatic mail was purportedly authorized by then-Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro, who is currently the Venezuelan president, and intended for M5S co-founder Gianroberto Casaleggio, who died in 2016.
"This media operation orchestrated to discredit the Five Star Movement gives us the opportunity to clarify with dignity that our position on the repeated and failed coup attempts in Venezuela has been and will always be based on the political choice to defend dialogue between the parties, peace, national sovereignty and international law," Petrocelli said in a statement obtained by Sputnik.
Separately, on Twitter, the senator called this "attack" on the party and on late Casaleggio a chance for the movement to "re-unify and defend our symbol together."
Earlier on Monday, the M5S firmly rejected claims of receiving covert funding from the Venezuelan government in 2010. Its acting leader Vito Crimi said that the party might sue the Spanish newspaper over its report.
In a comment to Agenzia Nova, the Venezuelan Embassy in Rome, too, rejected the claims. According to the diplomatic mission, Caracas intends to launch a legal case against the newspaper and "will act in accordance with law."
In January 2019, Italy refused to follow the lead of other EU nations in recognizing Juan Guaido, the then-speaker of Venezuela's opposition-run National Assembly, as the country's interim president. Later, the country joined a call for a new presidential election in the Bolivarian republic, but still stopped short of endorsing Guaido.
Such a stance was championed by the anti-establishment M5S party, while its then-coalition partner, the right-wing Lega party, was a proponent of a more hardline stance against Maduro. The issue added to differences within the then-coalition, which collapsed in September. M5S subsequently formed a cabinet with the Democratic Party.
