ROME -- Italy’s national broadcasting company, RAI, has made public a list of employee salaries with that of the CEO, Antonio Campo Dall’Orto, reaching the grand sum of 652,000 euros a year.

 The decision to make public the salaries of its employees is part of RAI’s plan for “transparency and corporate communication”. This reform will make it easily possible to view the budgets, contracts, and perhaps most crucially, salaries of members of the senior management, which are mostly all in excess of 200,000 euros a year.

  July’s news that the fees for having access to RAI would be included in one’s electricity bill did not come as a pleasant surprise to viewers across the nation, and it was partly for this reason that CEO Dall’Orto wanted to respond to the controversy by making all financial related information readily available online.

 Starting with the salaries of those at the top, it has been announced that Dall’Orto has a contract of three years and earns an annual 652,000 euros, with the president of the organisation, Monica Maggioni, earning 330,000 euros a year. Other salaries published include those of Antonio Marano, President of RAI Pubblicità, 390,000 euros, as well as Mauro Mazzo, former director of TG2 and RAI 1, 340,000, and finally Carlo Verdelli, director of editorial information, who earns 320,000 euros a year. These are only a few of the figures which have been released by RAI, but all members of senior management earn at least 200,000 euros a year.

 “We are the first big Italian company who has decided to opt for financial transparency… We regard highly the principle that citizens who pay the fee for our services have the right to know what happens at RAI,” the president, Maggioni, said. “Only the BBC, on the European scene, has the same attitude,” she added.

 President of the Democratic party Matteo Orfini, however, sees the matter in a different light: "What [RAI] defines as 'financial transparency' could also be called basic compliance with what future government reforms would ask of them anyway."

 Michele Anzaldi, a deputy for Orfini's party, was one of many others to voice their criticism: "Dozens of managers and directors are being paid astronomically high salaries, and yet they do nothing."

 lej-se