AGI – The Court of Auditors has motivated the stop to the financing of the Italian vaccine project ReiThera underlining “the absence of a valid and sufficient productive investment”. The resolution with which the central section of the legitimacy check on the acts of the Government and the State administrations of the Court has been filed the reasons behind the refusal of the legitimacy visa and the consequent registration of the decree of the Ministry of Economic Development with which the development agreement signed on February 17, 2021 by Mise, by the National Agency for the attraction of investments and business development SpA – Invitalia and by the ReiThera company, aimed at supporting the industrial development program to be carried out in the production plant in Castel Romano (Rm).
In particular, explains the Court, “this program provided for an investment project aimed at expanding the production plant site in Castel Romano and an industrial research and experimental development project intended to complete the clinical trial (phase 2 and 3 clinical trials) of the anti Covid-19 vaccine “.
The accounting judiciary therefore considered the proposed investment project “irreconcilable” with the condition set by the ministerial decree of 9 December 2014, according to which “the expenses are admissible ‘to the extent necessary for the purposes of the project object of the request for subsidies’ and not, as shown by the project presented, for the general purposes – production or research, also on behalf of third parties – pursued by ReiThera , nor for the even more general purposes of strengthening the equity consistency of the company “.
According to the Court, the productive investment project, in fact, pursuant to the same ministerial decree, “cannot concern the entire company complex but only certain ‘production units’ “.
“The purchase of the ownership of the operational headquarters of the company, located in Castel Romano (Rm), for an estimated amount of € 4,000,000.00 – explains the Court – does not relate to the single ‘production unit’, represented by the construction of the filling and packaging plant, as claimed by the Administration, but concerns the entire site where the Company carries out all its activities which ‘in 2019 concerned essentially research and development activities on behalf of the parent company Keires A.G ‘, as reported in the same Invitalia report “.
“The inadmissibility of the investment project consisting of the purchase of ownership of the Company’s operational headquarters – concludes the Court – does not therefore allow, in the opinion of the Section, the sole investment represented by the construction of the filling and packaging plant, for an amount of 7,734,126.68 euros, to reach the minimum threshold of 10 million euros prescribed “by the ministerial decree” for the validity of the productive investment “.
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