Senate rejects arrest of Azzollini

(ANSA) - Rome, July 29 - The Senate voted Wednesday against a petition to lift Antonio Azzollini's parliamentary immunity so he could be arrested for suspected graft, fraud and racketeering. The petition was rejected with 189 votes against, 96 in favour and 17 abstaining.
    Several parties including the ruling Democratic Party (PD) left their Senators free to vote 'according to their conscience' in the secret vote.
    Azzollini, a lawmaker for the New Centre Right (NCD) party, a junior partner in the ruling coalition, is under investigation for alleged involvement in the 500-million-euro crack-up of the Divine Providence nursing home chain, employing 1,600 people in the town of Bisceglie in Bari province. Azzollini is also the former mayor of the Puglia city of Molfetta.
    After the vote, Azzollini said the fact he chaired the influential Senate budget committee for years did not in any way affect the Senate's vote to save him.
    "I think the determining factor was reading the prosecution papers against me," he said. Azzollini quit as chair of the Senate budget committee on July 9, the same day the Senate immunity panel voted to allow his arrest with 13 votes in favour and seven against. On that occasion, he reiterated his innocence but said the committee needed a chair who could devote himself entirely to the position.
    Bari prosecutors wanted him arrested because of the "well-founded danger the Senator would reiterate crimes of the same kind as those repeatedly committed in the case" of the nursing home chain.
    They listed the crimes as racketeering, inducement to corruption and fraudulent bankruptcy.
    A Bari court had upheld the pretrial arrest warrant based on significant evidence against Azzollini and another nine people being investigated in the case.
    "The PD (saved) Azzollini to save the majority coalition, thus establishing the principle that all are not equal before the law," said Loredana De Petris from the small, leftwing opposition Left Ecology Freedom (SEL) party.
    "The PD is an accomplice of Azzollini...who as budget committee chair for many years must have done a lot of people a lot of favors," said Senator Mario Michele Giarrusso from the anti-establishment, anti-euro 5-Star Movement (M5S), an opposition party that is the second-largest in Italy after the ruling PD.
    "Renzi and the PD dropped their pants to save their seats," Matteo Salvini, chief of the opposition anti-immigrant, anti-euro Northern League party, wrote on Facebook.