entities and disguised as a diesel sale. The scheme involved the Russian state-owned oil company Rosneft selling 3 million dollars worth of diesel to an Italian company. Allegedly, the money was to be transferred from Rosneft to the League through a Russian subsidy of the Italian bank Banca Intesa, in which League's federal council member Andrea Mascetti is a board member. The money was supposed to fund the coming European election campaign. Italian authorities are currently investigating the matter. The case obtained renewed attention in July 2019 when BuzzFeed made public the voice recordings and full transcripts of the meeting at the base of the investigation previously published by L'Espresso. The recordings show Salvini's public relations officer Gianluca Savoini meeting with Russian agents close to Vladimir Putin in Moscow, at the same time when Salvini was also in Moscow on an official trip. The meeting centered around providing the Lega with $65 million of illegal funding by the Russian state. The matter was made part of a larger investigation by Italian authorities into the League's finances. The League has an official cooperation deal with Russia's governing party United Russia. In August 2019, in yet another funding scandal unrelated to the previously mentioned Russia investigations, Italy's highest court sentenced Salvini's party to pay back 49 million euros ($54.83 million) of illegally acquired taxpayer funding to the Italian state. Additionally, Belsito was given prison sentences. In the summer of 2019, Salvini visited several public beaches to campaign, something unusual for an Italian politician. In September 2022, numerous League committees expressed their desire to call for a Federal Congress and replace Salvini as Secretary. In October, the party founder Umberto Bossi announced the creation of the "Northern Committee" to re-gain trust from voters. Many politicians within the party joined this faction, which is openly challenging Salvini. European politics Leading up to the 2019 European Parliament election, Salvini worked to create a pan-European alliance of nationalist political parties, and he continued these efforts after the election. He founded the European Alliance of Peoples and Nations on 8 April 2019. In the European elections in Italy, the League won a plurality of votes for the first time in a nationwide election, gaining more than 34% of votes, something which strengthened Salvini's position in Italy. Overall, the European coalition Identity and Democracy, which the Lega is part of, became the fifth-largest group in the newly elected