The government has no intention of
changing legislation to restrict wiretaps, Premier Matteo Renzi
has said.
''Of course wiretaps are necessary - they are necessary to
discover guilty parties - but it would be best not to see family
affairs and gossip on the papers'', Renzi said on Sunday.
''Many magistrates don't pass such information'', he also
noted in an interview to the TG5 newscast of private television
Canale 5, referring to wiretaps that are part of a criminal
investigation and are leaked to the press.
Renzi's comments come after Federica Guidi on March 31
resigned as industry minister over wiretapped phone
conversations with her oil-industry boyfriend, Gianluca Gemelli,
on a government amendment to the Tempa Rossa project benefitting
him in Basilicata.
Excerpts from the wiretaps were published by national
newspapers.
Gemelli is under investigation for suspected influence
peddling while Guidi is not being probed.
Renzi had previously criticized Basilicata prosecutors'
probes into oil projects as being too slow and said
''magistrates should make themselves be heard through their
sentences''.
He stressed that the government was urging the judiciary to
''work more, not less'' and to ''reach a sentence'', while
leaked ''gossip'' would be best left ''out of the papers''.
The premier's interview to TG5 on Sunday came after the new
president of magistrates' union ANM, Pier Camillo Davigo, spoke
against limiting wiretaps.
Davigo said that publishing wiretaps that are not relevant
to an investigation ''is already banned by criminal law, at
least under the defamation crime''.
If wiretaps are not defamatory and are pertinent to an
investigation or concern the work of a public official, ''their
publication is legitimate'', noted Davigo.
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