RAI discreetly and lengthily stripped of its heritage

This is not the sack of Rome. It’s worse – even without the fire, the blood, the cruelty. For is there a sadder enemy than the one from within? And it’s a real pillage… RAI, “mamma RAI”, this Italian radio and television station which merges with the country itself, a distorted mirror of its political landscape and a faithful reflection of its culture, has allowed itself to be stripped for years unflinchingly. Without seeing anything. Without doing anything. It was enough for a painting to fall from the wall, in a corridor of the headquarters, in Rome, viale Giuseppe Mazzini, to trigger the storm.

In France, it would be a state affair. In Italy, it’s just one more scandal but it’s taking time to die down, acting like a slow poison. The work in question, Architecture, by the Florentine Ottone Rosai (1895-1957), a painter attracted for a time by fascism, represents a few stylized houses and two cypresses. During the confinement due to Covid-19, it unhooked and went to restoration. In May 2021, the Italian daily Il Messaggero reveals that it is a fake, but above all delivers the results of the investigation launched by the Rome public prosecutor’s office, following the report by RAI to the prosecutor: a raid on the artistic heritage of the house for decades.

The carabinieri first manage to identify the former unscrupulous RAI employee who committed his crime, in the 1970s, it seems. He sold the original for 25 million lire (about 42,000 euros), which he replaced with a copy made by a genius forger. In front of the police, the pensioner confesses without hesitation, certain of his impunity: the facts have long been prescribed. The work was only just beginning for the police specializing in the trafficking of works of art, the Cultural Heritage Protection (TPC). This inventory reveals, according to the Italian press, the disappearance of some 120 works, in Rome, at the headquarters in Milan, and in other branches of RAI, out of the 1,500 owned by the public company. Some replaced with fakes, many simply stolen.

Engravings, and not oils, by Monet, Corot, Modigliani, de Chirico, but also signed sculptures, carpets and furniture have disappeared. Investigators speculate that much of the theft took place after an exhibition of RAI’s works in Puglia in 1996. The scandal is all the greater as the treasures of the company, owned 99, 5% by the Ministry of Finance, were acquired thanks to the Italian taxpayer. The fee (he cannon), although among the lowest in Europe – 90 euros – represents the main source of funding for this public service. And brings in almost 2 billion euros each year.

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