Ghribi’s departure from the San Donato Group is also a blow to the Foreign Ministry

Kamel Ghribi’s departure from the San Donato Group, where he held the post of vice-chairman, not only reshapes the governance of the private healthcare giant, but perhaps also a significant aspect of the Italian government’s foreign policy. Thursday evening’s surprise announcement marks a turning point for the company founded in 1957 by Luigi Rotelli. Ghribi is out, replaced by Nicola Grigoletto, and Angelino Alfano is also out; his role as chairman passes to Marco Rotelli, the family’s second son – the eldest son, Paolo, announced in May that he was leaving the Group to pursue his passion, rap music.

Since 2019, the healthcare company’s expansion beyond national borders has ultimately become the driving force behind Italy’s foreign policy image in Africa and the Middle East. All this under the leadership of Ghribi, the businessman born in Tunisia – where people are already wondering whether this step back might herald a renewed bid for the presidency in Tunis – who made his fortune in the United States and Switzerland. So much so that there is now talk of Italy’s ‘health diplomacy’ – the kind that builds hospitals which become exclusive healthcare hubs and generate enormous sums of money. These range from the Benghazi healthcare centre – with a staggering market value of 2 billion dollars – to investments in the New Heliopolis Hospital in Cairo, the Al Najaf Al Ashraf Teaching Hospital in Najaf, Iraq, the Basra Hospital and, more recently, the Italian hospital in Baghdad, in the very heart of the Iraqi capital. Additional projects include 15 hospitals to be built in Kenya for over $400 million, social housing initiatives in Gabon, a multispecialist hospital in Tirana, and a waste-management project in Albania. All of these initiatives fall under the umbrella of GKSD Holding, the consultancy firm chaired by Ghribi, which serves as the operational arm of the San Donato Group for overseas investments. Often working hand in hand with the Mattei Plan, but also acting as a trailblazer and always using its own capital, drawing on high-level, cross-party connections.

This is appreciated by Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani and also by the head of the foreign intelligence services, Giovanni Caravelli. The latter gave his blessing to dealings with the Haftars in Libya by attending – without ever clarifying in what capacity – the signing of the memorandum for the construction of the hospital in Benghazi. Every year, in his capacity as founder and president of the think tank ECAM (European Council for Africa and the Middle East), Ghribi acts as host to virtually all of Africa’s leaders, whose propensity for authoritarianism at home ends up being swept under the carpet amidst the red carpets of the ECAM Summit in New York, now in its eighth edition. Alongside Ghribi at these events is often Tajani himself, as well as the highly regarded Ambassador Ettore Sequi, secretary-general of ECAM and a member of the board of directors of the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University. The question now is what will become of this ‘parallel Foreign Office’ and of all the memoranda signed without interruption by Ghribi over so many years. “There will be a radical change of direction,” promise sources close to the new board of directors, and indeed the intention announced by Marco Rotelli is to return to the San Donato Group’s core business: the Italian healthcare sector and research. If the Group were indeed to return to prioritising investments within Italy’s borders, many partners who had so far opened channels of dialogue with Rome precisely thanks to Ghribi might take a harder line. For example, in Benghazi, where the chairman of the Libyan Reconstruction Fund, Belqasim Haftar, is unlikely to have welcomed Ghribi’s departure with open arms.