Started by Boldrini and taken over by Berlusconi. When he worked at the Palazzo Sigi. “She said she was the granddaughter of the Rwandan prime minister.”

“Currently unemployed” and out of the welcome circle. But the curriculum of Lilian Murekadet, the wife of Abubakar Soumahoro, the vice-president of the Green-Left coalition, which has been caught in a political storm over the co-op case, has a number of important experiences. And one weighs more than anything else: Palazzo Sigi. But there are also famous acquaintances in Italy and abroad. Including an alleged affair with the former prime minister of Rwanda. The message to be verified, meanwhile, thickens the plot of a life suspended between social commitment, mundane and institutional work.

60 million public funds for Soumahoro, his wife partnership: millionaire contracts until last March

Life in the palace
Back off. A former employee of Caribou Cooperative, now in the crosshairs of the Latino lawyer’s investigations, recalls Dagospia, who served as adviser to the prime minister for more than two years in the Berlusconi government from 2003 to 2006. The second is the role of the Brody government. Then again in 2008 when Knight returned to the saddle: remembered as Africa’s “active” representative by the centre-right government. The mission, the latter, never really took off.

Beginnings
In 2003, he made his debut as an assistant to Alberto Michelini, the Italian Special Envoy of the G8 for Africa, a former Deputy of Tg1 and a former journalist. “I haven’t seen her for almost twenty years – he tells Il Messaggero – and I’m surprised by the news that’s coming out about her. There must have been a strong infiltration.”
The first meeting with Michelini is in Rome, with an exceptional sponsor: Laura Boldrini, former Speaker, at that time spokesperson of the UNHCR for Southern Europe. It’s June 20 and the UN is celebrating World Refugee Day with a conference, with Michelini and Alfredo Mantovano (Sigi’s current Under-Secretary) as Under-Secretary for the Interior. Boldrini places twenty-six-year-old Lilian, who miraculously survived the genocide that devastated Rwanda in 1994 with her family.

Paola Ganozzi, a consultant to Michelini and still on the team at Palazzo Sigi, was inspired and initiated the idea of ​​having the woman enter the palace. “He spoke perfect Italian in addition to his native English and French”, says Michelini, “he worked with us for more than two years, he followed us on missions in Africa, and our interlocutors appreciated the presence of ready young people. African in the Italian delegation”. Lilian joins the team. Stefano Pontecorvo, the diplomat who later became NATO envoy to Afghanistan, works with them in Piazza Colonna. The young woman stands out, collaborating with Berlusconi’s diplomatic adviser Bruno Archie. She even manages an interview with the prime minister.

“calm, prudent, careful”. The profile that Michelini draws collides with the portrait that emerges from the news these days, between the strangely social and harsh indictments of the workers in the hives where he worked. “Siki never saw Louis Vuitton bags or luxury goods in full view, nothing extravagant,” resumes the journalist. Before devoting himself full-time to co-operatives, Murekadet enjoyed a stint in corporates. A share of prestige (and a job). Aloof, sure, but not indifferent.

Premier and relatives
“We saw dozens of African heads of state, and he was always there,” says Michelini. With a story corroborated by several sources in Sigi twenty years ago. She claimed to be the granddaughter of Rwandan Prime Minister Bernard Makusa. Dissolved by parliament in 2003 on charges of supporting legitimate theses about the Rwandan genocide, the former frontline of the Republican Democratic Movement, the Rwandan political, ethnic Hutu. Michelini again: “He said he was an uncle. I never considered checking, we believed. I must say that on our trips to Rwanda he welcomed her with the affection and confidence of a close relative.