Cops delve into accounts of Soumahoro mother-in-law

(ANSA) - ROME, NOV 28 - Italian police are delving into the accounts of he mother-in-law of Italy's only black MP and its foremost migrant day labourer rights activist and union organizer in an investigation for aggravated fraud for suspected false invoicing in connection with two farm cooperatives she runs at Latina south of Rome, judicial sources said Monday.
    Until now Marie Therese Mukamitsindo, mother-in-law of 42-year-old Ivorian-born migrant activist Aboubakar Soumahoro, had been probed on suspicion of embezzling funds the cooperatives received from authorities for migrant workers, leaving them unpaid.
    On Sunday cooperative workers said they had been "fooled" by Soumahoro, who has suspended himself from his Green-Left party although he himself is not under investigation in the probe.
    Soumahoro has also defended his wife, also not under investigation but believed to have had a role in the coops, after pictures of her wearing designer clothes and accessories came out.
    He said that the woman, Liliane Murekatete, enjoyed "the right to fashion".
    Soumahoro, a hero to many, became Italy's only current black MP after the September 25 general election where he was 'parachuted' into a safe Green-Left seat at Modena in Emilia-Romagna.
    He turned up for the first parliamentary session in muddy wellies to highlight the continued plight of the labourers whose rights he has been defending against gangmasters and other exploitation for over a decade.
    Police in Latina, a city founded by Mussolini after he reclaimed the Pomptine Marshes in the 1930s, are going through documents on funding and grants for the two cooperatives run by Mukamitsindo.
    The are sifting them for evidence of unpaid wages and rents, judicial sources said.
    The Italian Left and Green leaders said Sunday they were looking closely at the probe while stressing that Soumahoro was not at the moment directly implicated.
    Left leader Nicola Fratoianni said the parties would "assume full political responsibility" while being "unaware of any offence" committed by their MP. (ANSA).