THE ITALIAN FINANCIAL POLICE, DESPITE LACKING A MANDATE TO ACT IN THE PRESENT-DAY FREE TERRITORY OF TRIESTE, SEEKS AND OBTAINS THE CONVICTION OF CITIZENS WHO CALL FOR FAIR TAXATION.
Free Trieste’s legal work for the re-establishment of the rule of law is labeled as an “EMERGENCY”. An intervention of the rules-based international order’s guarantors is more urgent than ever.
The local Commanding Officer of the Italian Financial police requests action be taken to stop the state of “emergency” consisting in the actions of the Free Trieste Movement, which questions the actions of Italian tax authorities in the present-day Free Territory of Trieste.
Trieste: things are critical. Decades of Italian (mis)governance brought the city-State beyond the point of no return.
Even the most inattentive observers see it. The people’s anger is like a hidden flame beneath the ashes. It increases one day after another, turning into resignation, and hatred.
Resignation to corruption and illegality, which, in the present-day Free Territory, comes from a local nationalistic “camorra”.
An establishment, a lobby that parasites the city’s decadence while hiding behind anachronistic Italian nationalism.
This “system” brags about its loyalty to the Italian State, but breaches Italian laws one after another.
Hatred, because often it is difficult seeing a difference between this lobby and bordering Italy’s own criminal cartel.
The situation is worsened by an increasing, harsh fiscal repression, carried out by the Italian Tax Revenue Agency and its operational arms: collector Equitalia S.p.A. and the Guardia di Finanza (Financial police of the Italian State) as intimidating controller and enforcer.
In Trieste, the “Fiamme Gialle” are very much unwanted also for historical reasons. Indeed, from 1918 to the end of World War II, first Italy, which occupied the Austrian Littoral, then Nazi Germany, willing to annex the “Adriatic Littoral” relied on the Italian Financial Police to control this land. Even, at one point, the German commando labeled the “Fiamme Gialle” as “too repressive”.
An outright trauma for Central European Trieste after 536 years prospering with Austria’s benevolent Government.
After WWII, the Italian Peace Treaty, in force and implemented in the international and Italian legal system, made Trieste the capital city of a new State: the Free Territory of Trieste.
An independent tax with its own taxation. Also, the Free Territory is exempted from the payment of the Italian public debt (art. 5, annex X). Trieste has the right to its own currency (art.11 annex VII) and, of course, to its own State budget and Stock exchange (it did until 1917, when the Italian authorities shut it down).
The only authority to respect the present-day Free Territory’s sovereignty – including monetary sovereignty – was its first State Government: the Allied Military Government Free Territory of Trieste – AMG FTT. From 1947 to 1954, Trieste had its own Financial police.
However, the Cold War era tensions prevented the appointment of the Free Territory’s Governor, an officer responsible of the second phase of Trieste’s provisional regime of Government and of its transition to the permanent regime.
This is why, in 1954, with a Memorandum of Understanding regarding the Free Territory of Trieste, the Governments of the United States and of the United Kingdom sub-entrusted Trieste’s temporary civil administration to the Italian Government.
The Italian Government committed to respect Trieste’s independence. However, the local Italian nationalists started simulating Italian sovereignty over Trieste and they still do. Again, despite Italy’s own recognition of Trieste’s independence.
It is worth mentioning that despite Italian nationalistic propagandas, the 1975 Italian-Yugoslav bilateral treaty has not “settled” Question Trieste dissolving the Free Territory.
First of all, a bilateral agreement cannot amend a multilateral Peace Treaty (such ad amendment requires specific procedures included in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties). Furthermore, the 1975 treaty confirms the 1954 Memorandum (art. 7 mentions that it has no bearing in relations between Italy and Yugoslavia. However, the two States are not parties in the MOU, which is an agreement between Governments).
One more evidence that the Italian Guardia di Finanza violates Italian laws (Law No. 3054 of 25 November 1952, in force, Italian Constitution, arts. 10 and 117) when it seeks to enforce Italian laws and taxes in Trieste. Citizens, enterprises, Trieste’s international Free Port of Trieste: they have the right to their own taxation. No State can levy taxes outside its sovereign territory.
Instead, Trieste’s people face intimidating inspections. Inspections, often very brutal, go after people whose only crime is to be “too civilized”.
Trieste’s people have a mindset from Mitteleuropa: they have a (maybe too big) sense of respect for the authority. This is the legacy of more than half a millennium as part of the Austrian empire. But Italy is not Austria-Hungary. To Italy, Trieste has always been just a spoil of war. The last colony to exploit as much as possible. As long as possible.
Agents of the Financial police enter public working spaces or houses seeking alleged “tax evaders”. They do so carrying their weapons, openly. As if we were in a land under the Mafia’s heel, as are too many Italian regions.
Try to imagine these men, in grey uniforms, openly carrying a Beretta Model 12 submachine gun with rate of fire 550 rounds per minute, automatic guns with 9mm caliber right in hand, as they enter your stores, your offices, your home. They want to see the accounts, if your customers have their receipts. Or they are investigating on behalf of the PG (Polizia Giudiziaria – Italian judicial police), which works for the Republic’s Prosecution Office.
They can take you by force, off to their offices of before Court, to make you “confess” your “crimes”.
With no guarantees, with no rights. You have none before them. Everything is possible when the law is in the hands of an omnipotent judiciary, and when citizens can be convicted without trial. They call them “precautionary convictions”. According to Italian legal experts, this is a tool to speed up “justice”.
Every year, about 2,000 illegal decreti penali di condanna (Criminal decrees of Conviction) are issued at the expenses of Trieste’s people.
Such convictions are illegal, in breach of human rights, and they are used against whoever dares to question the Fiamme Gialle. Including denouncing what they are doing in Italy’s name to the Free Territory of Trieste.
Because the local nationalistic establishment considers Trieste’s citizens who call for legality a very serious danger.
This is why they see the Free Trieste Movement as an “emergency”.
Becayse Free Trieste stands for of the rights of the Free Territory’s citizens and enterprises, and because it opposes the illegal, likely mafia-related attempted urbanization of Trieste’s Northern Free Port. Local politicians call it “old port”. In truth, it is a strategic sector of Trieste’s international Free Port.
What an “emergency”. One that it requires an urgent intervention from the very Comando Generale (General Command) of the Financial police.
Absolute freedom to eradicate Trieste’s revolution of legality.
This is what the local nationalistic “camorra” wants from Rome, apparently through the Financial police.
Before Free Trieste’s action can disrupt 60 years of misgovernment and very serious abuses of the Italian Government’s special trusteeship mandate over Trieste and its international Free Port. Violations the local authorities are responsible for to the Italian Government, which in turn responds to the British and US Governments. But also to the International Community. And, or course, to Trieste’s people.
It is not surprising that enemies of the rules-based international order hide behind in nationalism. As it is unsurprising that they would do anything to hide their misconducts.
How can they explain, for example, the way they are mismanaging the international Free Port’s inalienable properties and free zones? Or their abuses on the Free Territory’s own State Properties, sold to fill the Italian Republic’s coffers?
How to justify that the simulation of Italian sovereignty costs the Free Territory of Trieste under, unfair Italian taxes and fees? It all happens under the Financial Police’s strict contro.
This truly is an emergency, to quote the Trieste Financial Police’s Commending Officer’s letter to the Prosecution Office of the Republic. He seeks the intervention of “top officers” from Rome.
In Trieste, daring to claim citizenship of the Free Territory must be clashed. Punished. Silenced.
It happened to M.V. who was instantly punished with a Criminal Decree of Conviction by the criminal section of the Judge for Preliminary Investigations of the Court of Trieste.
M.V. belongs to the Free Trieste Movement: the Italian Financial police inspected his shop, and he informed it that they were violating his rights established under the 1947 Peace Treaty. Enough for a punishment. Here is an abstract of the Italian Financial police’s minutes:
“He did, after the completion of the acts, declare to be willing to present to the operating militias a paper, likely related to the aforementioned Movement [Free Trieste], which contains some observations concerning the alleged lack of Italian sovereignty over the “Free Territory of Trieste” anding with the note:
“… In view of this,
It is made clear that in this enforcement action, the proceeding public officer acting on behalf of the Republic of Italy in Zone A* of the Free Territory of Trieste is committing a breach of the 1947 Treaty of Peace and in breach of the rights it grants to the undersigned citizen of Free Territory of Trieste who request be immediately complied with.”
*Zone A is the present-day Free Territory of Trieste’ old name (1947-1991/2).
This means the Free Territory of Trieste’s citizen was convicted, without trial, for exercising his own rights and seeking legal certainty.
Certainty that is the same in Trieste’s and in Italy’s laws. Italian authorities refusing to comply with their own laws are committing treason, aren’t they?
UPDATE: the trial against M.V. ended in August 2015: LINK
Translated from blog “Ambiente e Legalità” – “Environment and Legality” by Roberto Giurastante
