In January 2021, Volontè was sentenced to four years in prison for accepting bribes from Azerbaijani officials to use his position as a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) to mute criticism of Azerbaijan's human rights abuses.
[1][2] In February 2015 the Novae Terrae foundation was searched by the Milan Prosecutor's Office as part of an investigation of Volontè for tax offenses.
Prosecutors found that money flowed from tax havens into Volontè's accounts, including Novae Terrae, which received €1.89 million in 18 payments of €105 thousand each between July 2013 and December 2014 from two front Scottish companies, who they believe Elkhan Suleymanov was behind.
In total, he received 2.39 million euros through Novae Terrae from Azerbaijan officials so that Volontè would, while serving on the Council of Europe, bury a report by Christoph Strässer, a German deputy, on torture and inhumane treatment in Azerbaijani prisons.
From 2016 until 2019, Volontè was the chairman of the Dignitatis Humanae Institute and he currently serves on the board of CitizenGo, a petition platform set up by the far-right group Hazte Oír.
Massimiliano Codoro, who'd been on the board for 10 years, left the organization and was replaced with Simone Pillon, who renounced the chair after the first investigative article by L'Espresso.
[1][6] The foundation registered a new statute in January 2019, when the president Emanuele Fusi, Luca Volontè, despite being under investigation, Gianfranco Amato (founder of Nova Civilitas and a leader of The People of Family, which ran in the 2018 Italian election with a campaign solely focused on the traditional family and opposition to LGBT rights), Flavio Felice, Giuseppe Zola, and Nicola Abalsamo presented themselves as founding members.
[2][5][6][14] Novae Terrae redistributed funds it received to right-wing fundamentalist lobbyists in Italy, Spain, Great Britain, the United States, Poland, and Hungary.
[1] In January, Novae Terrae transferred 12 thousand euros to Benjamin Harnwell, a British ultra-conservative politician who founded the Dignitatis Humanae Institute, a Catholic organization whose most famous member is Steve Bannon.
Later in 2014, Novae Terrae donated 25 thousand euros to the Iona Institute, a think tank known for campaigning against civil unions and abortion in Ireland.