Pressure mounts on M5S mayor of Quarto

(ANSA) - Naples, January 11 - Beleaguered Quarto mayor Rosa Capuozzo of the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S) will likely postpone until Tuesday a decision on whether to resign over a probe into Camorra mafia infiltration of her administration, her staff said Monday. Capuozzo is resisting calls from all sides - including an invitation Sunday from M5S leaders Beppe Grillo and Gianroberto Casaleggio - to step down.
    The M5S recently ejected a former city councillor in the town near Naples, Giovanni De Robbio, after he was placed under investigation on suspicion of taking Camorra votes in exchange for a public works project. The mayor herself has not been placed under investigation in the Camorra infiltration probe.
    In a November 24 wiretap, she is heard telling councillor and fellow M5S member Concetta Aprile that De Robbio "can kick up a fuss and blackmail all he wants, but he's not getting anywhere because I'm like a wall".
    Also on Monday, police released a wiretapped December 16 conversation between Capuozzo and M5S caucus leader, councillor and Army officer Alessandro Nicolais, in which the embattled mayor said she will quit before "ending up in prison for someone else". "I can't take it anymore," Capuozzo is heard telling Nicolais in tears.
    "I can take anything, but I won't end up in prison for someone else," she said in the wiretap. "I fought back when I was threatened over the house - I said, demolish this (expletive) house," Capuozzo said, referring to alleged building irregularities in a home owned by her husband's family.
    "I've been threatened over everything and anything," she said. Police earlier in the day searched the town council offices as well Capuozzo and Nicolais' homes following the wiretaps, which investigators say contradict the mayor's previous statements that she hadn't been subject to blackmail. The anti-euro M5S prides itself on being an outsider to what it says is the corrupt, conniving political system in Italy, where it is currently the second-largest party after Premier Matteo Renzi's Democratic Party (PD).