Carabinieri marshal arrested for leaking mob-probe docs to Cosentino

(ANSA) - Naples, July 28 - 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.