Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia has secured a job for a close associate of the Milan magnate and scandal-ridden former prime minister in a marathon horse trading session between Italy’s coalition partners.

Paolo Scaroni will chair the governing board of Enel, the Italian energy conglomarate in which the Italian state owns 23.6% of the shares. Scaroni had been the company’s CEO in the past.

Scaroni hit the headlines in Malta when Times of Malta revealed that Joseph Muscat had brought together him and another friend of his Yorgen Fenech. Scaroni, who is president of the Italian football club AC Milan, worked for Rothschilds Bank. Joseph Muscat introduced Scaroni to Yorgen Fenech, who at the time was looking for investors in Electrogas.

When Joseph Muscat introduced his friends to each other he had already been informed by the police that they had identified Yorgen Fenech as prime suspect in the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia.

When news emerged that he had introduced his two friends Paolo Scaroni and Yorgen Fenech, the disgraced former prime minister of Malta described the event as “normal”.

Joseph Muscat had also described as “normal” inviting Yorgen Fenech to join a select number of close friends and associates to a birthday party he hosted at the prime minister’s residence in Girgenti even though he knew Yorgen Fenech to be a murder suspect. Muscat later explained that not inviting Yorgen Fenech would have raised Yorgen Fenech’s suspicions.