Beleaguered Quarto mayor Rosa
Capuozzo of the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S) will
likely postpone until Tuesday a decision on whether to resign
over a probe into Camorra mafia infiltration of her
administration, her staff said Monday.
Capuozzo is resisting calls from all sides - including an
invitation Sunday from M5S leaders Beppe Grillo and Gianroberto
Casaleggio - to step down.
The M5S recently ejected a former city councillor in the
town near Naples, Giovanni De Robbio, after he was placed under
investigation on suspicion of taking Camorra votes in exchange
for a public works project.
The mayor herself has not been placed under investigation
in the Camorra infiltration probe.
In a November 24 wiretap, she is heard telling councillor
and fellow M5S member Concetta Aprile that De Robbio "can kick
up a fuss and blackmail all he wants, but he's not getting
anywhere because I'm like a wall".
Also on Monday, police released a wiretapped December 16
conversation between Capuozzo and M5S caucus leader, councillor
and Army officer Alessandro Nicolais, in which the embattled
mayor said she will quit before "ending up in prison for someone
else".
"I can't take it anymore," Capuozzo is heard telling
Nicolais in tears.
"I can take anything, but I won't end up in prison for
someone else," she said in the wiretap.
"I fought back when I was threatened over the house - I
said, demolish this (expletive) house," Capuozzo said, referring
to alleged building irregularities in a home owned by her
husband's family.
"I've been threatened over everything and anything," she
said.
Police earlier in the day searched the town council offices
as well Capuozzo and Nicolais' homes following the wiretaps,
which investigators say contradict the mayor's previous
statements that she hadn't been subject to blackmail.
The anti-euro M5S prides itself on being an outsider to
what it says is the corrupt, conniving political system in
Italy, where it is currently the second-largest party after
Premier Matteo Renzi's Democratic Party (PD).
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