Halfway around the world from Hawaii, Italian authorities are looking into alleged collusion on the sale that last year brought Honolulu rail’s operator under new ownership.
How their investigation might affect completion of the island’s elevated public transit system remains unclear.
The European nation’s tax police last week searched the Italian offices of three firms linked to the elevated transit system that’s being built on Oahu, according to international media reports.
They visited Japanese industrial group Hitachi’s office in Naples, the Italian defense firm Finmeccanica in Rome and train signaling company Ansaldo STS in Genoa as part of an investigation into Hitachi’s purchase of Ansaldo, the global news outlet Reuters reported.
Ansaldo STS, along with train manufacturer AnsaldoBreda, has a $1.4 billion contract — the largest in state history — to design and build Honolulu’s 20-mile, 21-station rail transit system.
Finmeccanica previously owned AnsaldoBreda and a 40 percent stake in Ansaldo STS. It had tried for several years to sell those rail assets before announcing in February 2015 that it would sell to Hitachi.
The parties then announced in November that they had closed the deal.
Sources told Reuters that the tax police acted on behalf of Milan prosecutors who are investigating allegations of market rigging and obstructing regulators. The prosecutors are looking into alleged collusion between Hitachi and Finmeccanica over the price Hitachi paid, according to the news outlet.
The semiautonomous government agency overseeing rail’s completion on Oahu said that so far it does not see any effects from the investigation.
“At this time there is no information to lead us to believe that this would change anything to do with the delivery of our trains,” Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation spokesman Bill Brennan said in an email Friday.
HART board Chairman Don Horner added in a separate email that agency officials have informed the board that “the pending stock sale to Hitachi has had no impact on contractor performance.”
“Additionally, HART has investment grade performance bonds securing the contractors’ performance,” Horner wrote.
HART expects to receive on Oahu the transit system’s first four rail cars from Hitachi’s Pittsburg, Calif., factory by the end of this month.
