Lara Comi, a former MEP for Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia (FI) party, was put under house arrest by finance police on Thursday in relation to a corruption probe.
Paolo Orrigoni, the CEO of the Tigros supermarkets group, was also put under house arrest while Giuseppe Zingale, the director of Milan's Afol Metropolitana training agency, was taken to jail.
The arrests were made after investigators opened an offshoot to a probe that saw 43 liberty-restricting warrants executed in May, with FI's former coordinator in Nino Caianiello, FI Lombardy councillor Fabio Altitonante and local councillor Pietro Tatarella among the people implicated. According to the arrest warrant, Comi exploited her public role to obtain "the maximum gain in economic terms" for herself.
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