Rome's embattled Mayor Virginia
Raggi said after emerging from eight hours of questioning by
Rome prosecutors Thursday night that she knew "nothing" about a
30,000-euro assurance policy written out in her name by her
former cabinet chief Salvatore Romeo six months before she hired
him.
On Friday she reiterated; "I knew nothing about it".
"These policies can be made out without informing the
beneficiary, they don't have to be counter-signed," she said.
Asked if she felt like ex-minister Coaudio Scajola who was
bought a flat "unbeknownst to him", she reiterated "these
policies can be done without the beneficiary knowing".
Raggi was questioned Thursday in a separate probe in which
she is suspected of abuse of office for appointing Renato Marra,
brother of her former right-hand man Raffaele Marra, as Rome
tourist chief.
"I cleared everything up," Raggi said as she emerged Thursday
night.
"I'm going ahead," she said.
Romeo wrote out the policy before he got his highly paid job
as cabinet chief and there have been suggestions that this was a
quid-pro-quo for the assurance policy.
But observers have said the mayor would surely not have been
naive enough to take a bribe that would have been so easily
proven.
Raffaela Marra, former Rome personnel chief, was arrested in
December in a separate corruption probe. Both Marra brothers
have been sacked from their jobs.
Raggi said Friday "I still feel part of the 5-Star Movement
and I'm not at all thinking of resigning."
Romeo told ANSA on the phone "for now I'm not talking, I'm
organising a defence".
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