A leading Italian newspaper yesterday urged the deputy head of Italy’s fragile ruling coalition to resign over the expulsion of the wife and daughter of dissident Kazakh oligarch Mukhtar Ablyazov.
Interior Minister Angelino Alfano, who also serves as deputy premier, was not told of the operation in which Ablyazov’s wife Anna Shalabayeva and their six year-old daughter Alua were expelled in May, the government said in a statement. It said it had now withdrawn the deportation order.
The incident has added to the headaches facing Prime Minister Enrico Letta, who was already struggling to contain coalition tensions between Alfano’s centre-right People of Freedom and his own centre-left Democratic Party.
Italian newspapers reported that at least four senior officials, including Alfano’s own chief of staff could be sacked over the incident, and La Repubblica called for Alfano, a key lieutenant of centre-right leader Silvio Berlusconi, to go.
“A minister who doesn’t know about an operation of this kind and is not in control of the police is both responsible for everything and good for nothing: he should resign,” the left-leaning newspaper said in a front-page editorial.
Members of Alfano’s People of Freedom party rejected the demand, saying paper was trying to bring down the government months after the deadlocked national election in February which forced the creation of the uneasy coalition.
The PD, wary about exacerbating problems for Letta, has been more circumspect but Dario Nardelli, a senior deputy, said “it is in Alfano’s interest to clear up this situation”.
Italy has major economic interests in Kazakhstan, including energy group Eni’s stake in the giant Kashagan oil field.
The case has also highlighted the close relations between Berlusconi’s former government, in which Alfano served as justice minister, and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has ruled the oil-rich state for 17 years.