Check, please.

The bill for the most expensive G8 in history has now arrived totaling a full €512 million . This is the expense that Italy spent for last year’s G8 Summit, which was moved from the island of La Maddalena to L’Aquila. And it was simply due to a PR stunt orchestrated during Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s sex scandal crisis.

The most incredible thing is that the G8 venue at La Maddalena was already prepared and had been for months… at a huge cost.  New hotels, conference rooms, docks, and streets were built or renovated for a total cost of €327 million. Money wasted. Money which magistrates are now investigating due to an emerging conflict-of-interests scandal which would have seen lucrative construction contracts awarded to the usual “friends of friends”.

Following the polemics over bribes received by the Civil Protection agency, it should not be excluded that something fishy took place even for the G8 preparations.

So, €327million have been thrown away. But why? Because Silvio Berlusconi decided to move the G8 Summit from a renovated and rebuilt La Maddelena to L’Aquila, the city that had recently been devastated by an earthquake. Over a mere few months a new G8 was organized with the government spending further €200 million in L’Aquila.

When the internally displaced citizens of L’Aquila now feel the coming summer heat in their refugee tents, they will remember the millions of euros in frivolities spent for the ‘world’s great leaders’.  Yes, Italy’s G8 farce was an incredible waste of public money and suspicion now falls upon those who may be responsible for such reckless greed.

Read the article here.