A Carabinieri police marshal was
arrested Thursday on suspicion of leaking investigation
documents on the Campania-based Camorra mafia to Nicola
Cosentino, a former MP for Silvio Berlusconi's now-defunct
People of Freedom (PDL) party.
Officer Giuseppe Iannini is accused of revealing classified
documents, aggravated by mafia methods.
Cosentino is under investigation in the same case, on
suspicion of receiving stolen goods aggravated by mafia methods.
The documents concern alleged relations between the Camorra
and the former president of the province of Naples, Luigi
Cesaro, the sources said.
Naples anti-mafia prosecutors say they found evidence the
leaked documents were downloaded from a pen drive onto
Cosentino's computer, both of which was seized when the former
Campania PdL coordinator was arrested on April 3, 2014, in the
course of a separate investigation into his family-owned fuel
company Aversana Petroli Srl.
Also on Thursday, police searched Cosentino's home in the
city of Caserta as well as the homes of former Avanti! paper
editor-in-chief Valter Lavitola and of Carabinieri officer
Enrico La Monica.
Lavitola and co-defendant Berlusconi were sentenced in July
2015 to three years in prison for bribing a former Senator,
Sergio De Gregorio, to defect to the centre-right, toppling the
centre-left government of Romano Prodi in 2008. De Gregorio
confessed to receiving two million euros from Berlusconi to make
the switch.
The judges considered journalist and wheeler-dealer
Lavitola to be the 'mastermind' of the operation that brought
down Prodi's shaky coalition, paving the way for Berlusconi to
return to power for the third time.
La Monica's name has surfaced in the past in connection
with an influence-peddling case known as the P4 affair.
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