IMI – Spies at the Med
In September 2016, 12 NGO ships were operative in the Search and Rescue zone. Save the Children's Vos Hestia was one of them. Among it's subcontracted crew was a small private security firm, IMI Security. Though no one knew it at the time, IMI’s founder, Christian Ricci, had ties to the Generation Identity movement, while the agents on board were supporters of italian right-wing politicians.
Three of those IMI Security agents, Floriana Ballestra, Pietro Gallo and Lucio Montanino, triggered the investigation into the Iuventa. On September 25th, they sent an e-mail to AISE (Italian Foreign Intelligence Service) claiming to have evidence of possible collusion between the Iuventa and people smugglers. While the agents never received a reply from the Italian Secret Service, they also reached out to Matteo Salvini himself. He replied instantly. During their next deployment in the Search and Rescue zone, the agents gave the most powerful right-wing voice in Italy a direct line of insight into the heart of the civil fleet. Two and a half years later, in January 2019, a repentant Pietro Gallo voiced his regret for having been Salvini’s spy, and implied that he had been bribed with a promise of a job. He also admitted that he had no evidence of a relationship between NGOs and smugglers.
On October 14th 2016, after they had returned from their deployment, the agents filed an official complaint to the Trapani judiciary, placing the Iuventa at the center of a year-long investigation that drew in multiple law enforcement agencies, including the SCO, an investigative branch of the Italian police specialized in organized crime. Over the course of the following months, the investigative team allocated enormous resources to the case, including wiretaps, bugs and an undercover agent.