Napolitano calls for criminals to be rooted out of politics

(ANSA) - Rome, December 10 - As a massive mafia probe in the nation's capital continued to shake the city's political and business hierarchies, President Giorgio Napolitano said Wednesday that the State must be uncompromising in its handling of corruption.
    "The will to prevent and strike at criminal infiltrations and corrupt practices in politics and administration must never be put in doubt," he said in comments on a massive ongoing mafia probe in the capital. Also on Wednesday, finance police searched the offices of Rome waste-management company AMA in an operation linked to the probe.
    The aim of the operation was to identify contracts to monitor, in view of the possibility of putting them in the hands of a special State-appointed commissioner, the sources said.
    Rome Mayor Ignazio Marino met Wednesday with chief city prosecutor Giuseppe Pignatone and delivered a set of documents which sources said may be useful in the ongoing probe. Marino, a member of the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) of Premier Matteo Renzi, has so far not been implicated in the investigation of over 100 suspects, including former Rome center-right mayor Gianni Alemanno.
    The organisation allegedly run by ex rightwing terrorist and gangster Massimo Carminati, allegedly rigged Rome city contracts worth many millions of euros in sectors ranging from waste disposal to transportation to the management of migrant reception centres and Roma camps. Wiretaps show Carminati did not look forward to Pignatone's appointment as Rome chief prosecutor, sources said Wednesday. "He won't play," the jailed suspect said in a January 2012 wiretap.
    "He'll turn Rome on its head...he did it Calabria...he won't let politics swallow him up". Also on Wednesday, sources at city hall said rotation of civil service managers could begin within the next 36 hours. Marino last weekend announced the measure designed to keep city agencies running and corruption-free while the mafia probe runs its course. As well, prosecutors are investigating the December 5 theft of a computer after a late-night break-in into Rome's parks services and civil protection offices. Police sources said the theft could be linked to the ongoing mafia probe. The security cameras on both buildings had been down for several days, investigative sources told ANSA.
    On Tuesday, Renzi vowed that the culprits will be punished to the fullest extent. Renzi also announced that his government will raise the minimum jail term for corruption to six years, and that the statute of limitations for graft felonies will be lengthened. "The corrupt will pay for everything," Renzi said via his Twitter account, @matteorenzi, as the Italian political world continued to feel the aftershocks of the probe prosecutors revealed last week. He added the changes will be proposed formally later this week.