A plan by Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former chief strategist, to launch an alt-right academy in an Italian monastery now risks being scotched by the authorities. Evidence has emerged that a key document used to secure tenancy of the property was forged.

Mr Bannon is paying the €100,000-a-year ($111,000) rent on a former Carthusian monastery, the Certosa di Trisulti, in the mountains east of Rome. The property belongs to the state. But in February 2018 Italy’s arts and heritage ministry granted a 19-year lease to a Catholic non-profit organisation then based in Rome, the Dignitatis Humanae Institute (dhi), of which Mr Bannon is a trustee. Two official bodies are investigating the concession: the attorney-general’s department and the regional auditors’ court in Lazio, the region around Rome in which the monastery is situated. An official says the ministry is not ruling out revoking the lease.

Source: The Economist