Orlando runs 'checks' on Crocetta tap

(fixes slug).
    (ANSA) - Rome, July 23 - Justice Minister Andrea Orlando said Thursday he had ordered "preliminary checks" into a controversial wiretap involving Sicilian Governor Rosario Crocetta, the existence of which is disputed. "I have launched the preliminary checks as is the case every time there is an improper circulation of trial information," Orlando said. "There is no specificity, it is almost an automatism," the minister added. Crocetta suspended himself last Thursday after L'Espresso magazine published the tap in which he allegedly said nothing when his doctor Matteo Turino, probed in a hospital graft case, said Sicily health councillor Lucia Borsellino should meet the same fate as her Cosa-Nostra slain father, anti-Mafia prosecutor Paolo Borsellino.
    Prosecutor's offices subsequently said they had no such wiretap on their files but the magazine stood by its story, saying the tap had been classified.
    Crocetta, a member of Premier Matteo Renzi's Democratic Party (PD), claimed he was the victim of a smear campaign and announced he would sue l'Espresso for 10 million euros.