Marino returns to work after quitting

(ANSA) - New York, October 9 - Ignazio Marino returned to work on Friday, the day after he quit as Rome mayor over an expenses scandal, the latest in a long series of furores to dog his two-year-old administration.
    Marino, who lost the backing of his own centre-left Democratic Party (PD), will continue to run the city until a commissioner is nominated to replace him ahead of municipal elections next year.
    The outgoing mayor, who is a doctor by profession, is depicted as incompetent by opposition parties, who have blamed him for a series of problems to hit the city, including public transport disruption and degradation in several parts of the capital. But his supporters say the expense scandal and other furores, including a visit to Philadelphia for the World Meeting of Families which Pope Francis said the Church did not invite him to, were cooked up by enemies whose vested interests he had touched.
    Among other things, Marino tried to tackle corruption and nepotism in the city's transport and refuge agencies, incensed many extending pedestrian zones in Rome's historic center and also incurred the wrath of the right by taking strong stands in favor of gay marriage and the integration of immigrants.
    "If those (expense) receipts had not arrived, sooner or later they would have said that my socks had holes in or they would have put cocaine in my pocket," Marino said in an interview published in Friday's edition of La Stampa.