After more than a month of embarrassed silence, half-phrases, the interim director of Repubblica, Stefano Cappellini, broke the silence. And he told his version of the survey that Sigfrido Ranucci was supposed to launch as a prime minister candidate of the broad field. Or at least, that was the plan in the mind of Valter Lavitola, the entrepreneur who just a few months earlier had orchestrated the attack on the host of Report. Cappellini in his long reconstruction – during which he retraces his meetings and dialogues with the fixer -, immediately goes on the defensive. “I think it has journalistic value that now I put a few facts in order, also to prevent people with other interests and purposes from doing it,” writes the director of Rep.
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FIRST MEETING
And so the story begins, starting from August 2023 when he found himself at Cefalù (Lavitola’s restaurant) for a dinner organized by a friend together with “a star of Italian music.” But Valterino is someone who knows how to attract attention and, between the story of one wrongdoing and another, persuaded the then deputy director of Repubblica that the most interesting interview would be precisely that of the owner of the place. Not the star. For this reason, in March 2024, Rep published Cappellini’s interview with Lavitola about Gianfranco Fini’s brother-in-law and the villa in Montecarlo. A story that the fixer experienced firsthand.
The two – according to Cappellini’s account – would neither have seen nor heard from each other until February 2026, when Lavitola contacted him to ask for help with the famous survey. “He says he is in contact with a person of great stature and popularity who could enter politics” and who “could aspire to the role of center-left prime minister candidate.”
No names for the moment. Only the hint of a so-called American survey (“whose actual existence I wouldn’t bet a euro on,” adds Cappellini) in which the profile in question would have a very high approval rating. Certainly, one wonders why an American institute would have had to survey Ranucci. On Lavitola’s input? And why then, if he had already commissioned a survey in the USA, this mania to get help from Cappellini and other journalists like Paolo Mieli? It is unknown. The fact is that the former director of L’Avanti! had no problem asking for advice on the questions to ask voters and on possible institutes to entrust with the survey. On that occasion Cappellini sketched a couple of ideas: “I tell him that the fundamental questions are two or three: if voters see space for a candidate from civil society not expressed by the parties, on which issues he should focus and his potential as a challenger to Giorgia Meloni.” The conversation ended with the promise to send the fixer a more elaborate draft.
“I leave the restaurant wondering, without a certain answer, whether it is a good lead or a hoax. The evaluation of sources is fundamental in our profession but no source should be excluded a priori,” Cappellini justifies himself. And, a month later, given Lavitola’s pressures, he sent him the fateful questions. “You’ll see you’ll have a surprise worth this pain,” Valterino wrote to him.
The reason for all this interest in Lavitola is soon said (always with disclaimers): “As a commitment to try to get hold of a possible news, it is a negligible effort as well as a harmless courtesy. And for courtesies, the criminal record is not checked.” Yet when the fateful news arrived, Repubblica decided to snub it. At the beginning of June, in fact, when Lavitola had come back to make himself heard, the director of Rep says he got impatient and asked for the so-called name. But the answer did not satisfy him. “For me it is madness” was Cappellini’s comment on the name of Sigfrido Ranucci. And again: “He has no chance to take off.” But the restaurateur was so convinced of his horse that he even involved Romano Prodi. The professor – according to Lavitola’s reconstruction – “aims to cancel the primaries and so Ranucci could be the right man to get everyone to agree.”
“NOT RELIABLE”
Cappellini’s conclusion? “The story of the American survey doesn’t add up, the Italian survey doesn’t add up, the candidate for premiership is not plausible and the source is not reliable. For this reason, after a minimum investigation, we write nothing.” An undoubtedly detailed reconstruction by the journalist, who at the end also tells about the last messages exchanged with Lavitola before the arrest. Those in which the entrepreneur swore and swore he was innocent. A month before confessing.
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