With two-fifths of Antonveneta's shares confiscated, the Dutch are technically in control of the bank.
BPI's bids seems to have been the desire to keep Antonveneta in Italian hands.
It lent money to several Italian businessmen to buy shares in Antonveneta without disclosing the loans.
Mr Fazio, whose opposition to foreign ownership of Italian banks is well known, met Antonveneta shareholders.
And press releases, which claimed to correct rumours about dealings in Antonveneta's shares, gave misleading information.
This meant the Dutch bank could buy only another 7% of Antonveneta when the pact expired.
The battle for Antonveneta started about seven months ago when ABN Amro launched a bid for the bank.
Mr Gnutti was keen to increase his stake in Antonveneta, and was a natural ally for Mr Fiorani.
As soon as Antonveneta's board had accepted it, BPI stepped in, pulling every available string to thwart the Dutch.
Meanwhile, the Italian government is at last awakening to the scale of the dodgy manoeuvres to gain control of Antonveneta.
After April 15th, when the Antonveneta shareholders' pact expired, large volumes of that bank's shares would be on the market.
Latest developments in the soap opera that the takeover battle for Antonveneta has become have revived discussion of Mr Tremonti's proposal.
At a shareholders' meeting in April it teamed up with its allies to replace Antonveneta's board with a new one friendly to itself.
Buying Antonveneta, for example, drew it into a two-year battle with Italy's then central bank governor, Antonio Fazio, for little reward thus far.
It increased its stake in Antonveneta to 29.5%, just below the trigger set by Italian law for a mandatory cash offer for the rest of the shares.
At that time, even as the bank was digesting the Antonveneta purchase, the liquidity situation of MPS worsened due to tensions in sovereign-debt markets, the central-bank document says.
Their plan was to gain control of Antonveneta's board at its annual general meeting at the end of April, an objective possible with around 30% of the votes.
The tussle over Antonveneta has implications not just for prospective investors in Italy, but also for the Europe's single currency, which relies for success on increasingly free movement of capital.
As a postscript to the finance minister's departure, Antonveneta now looks set to be taken over by ABN Amro, despite all the apparent efforts of Mr Fazio to prevent this.
One possibility was a merger between Antonveneta and Capitalia.
On Thursday BPI's board met and instructed its lawyers to press on with selling the Italian bank's nearly 30% stake in Antonveneta to its Dutch rival, having decided to sell up last week.
According to the Bank of Italy document, the central bank began to question MPS's capital solidity when it first had to evaluate whether to give its green light to the Antonveneta acquisition in 2008.
Consob, Italy's stockmarket regulator, ruled that Banca Popolare di Lodi acted improperly by failing to state it was working with other parties in building a controlling stake in Banca Antonveneta , a larger Italian rival that it wants to buy.
Mr Fazio rang Mr Fiorani shortly after midnight, one night in July, to tell him he had just signed a document approving BPI's plan to take a majority stake in Antonveneta, thereby (it seemed at the time) scuppering the rival, foreign bid.
The first was the government's handling of the bizarre affair of Italy's central-bank governor, Antonio Fazio, who is accused of favouring a takeover bid by Banca Popolare Italiana (BPI) for Antonveneta, a larger Italian bank, over a rival bid from a Dutch bank, ABN Amro.
Fabrizio Viola, chief executive of Monte dei Paschi who was brought into the bank to turn it round a year ago, said on Monday he thought the acquisition of Antonveneta was "expensive" but he had seen no evidence of bribes being paid to secure the deal, a suggestion put forward by prosecutors.
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