Senate Speaker Piero Grasso said
Friday that Rome's city government should not be dissolved amid
an investigation into mafia infiltration.
"It takes more to dissolve a municipality," the former
anti-mafia prosecutor said responding to calls from some
politicians to break up the current administration.
Mayor Ignazio Marino and his colleagues are "apart" from
the investigation that is focussing on earlier administrations,
said Grasso.
But Northern League leader Matteo Salvini said his party
"is working" on finding a Rome candidate which the party will
propose as an alternate mayor.
One day earlier, Rome Prefect Giuseppe Pecoraro said that
his office was considering a petition from the
anti-establishment 5-Star Movement for the Rome city council to
be dissolved for mafia infiltration.
Pecoraro also said that security measures for Marino were
being beefed up, as the shock waves continued after prosecutors
announced this week that they were conducting a huge probe into
alleged links between local Roman politicians and a mafia
organisation.
More than 100 people are under investigation, including the
man who Marino replaced as mayor in 2013, Gianni Alemanno, a
right-wing politician and former agriculture minister under
ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi.
As well, some 37 people were arrested on Tuesday.
Several of those being investigated were expected to appear
before an investigating magistrate on Saturday.
Marino has so far emerged from the probe as being an
incorruptible figure, but some members of his and Premier Matteo
Renzi's centre-left Democratic Party (PD) have been implicated
in the scandal.
Meawhile, PD national President Matteo Orfini, who has been
put in charge of the Rome branch to party after this week's
probe, said he did not think dissolution would be necessary.
"I don't believe there is the risk of the City of Rome
being placed under a commissar," said Orfini.
"This (Marino's) administration has been a dam against the
criminal powers and what emerges shows how there was an attack
on this administration".
Still, Foreign Affairs Minister Paolo Gentiloni said the
party must be sure to do a thorough "cleaning at home," within
the party.
Italy's anti-corruption czar Raffaele Cantone on Thursday
denied reports that he was setting up a special team to look at
corruption linked to the so-called Mafia Capitale.
But Cantone said that his authority would order any
contracts that are tainted by organised crime to be removed from
the firms or cooperatives that have them.
"We told Marino that we will run checks on the contracts
and we will put those won thanks to corruption in the hands of
commissioners," Cantone said after meeting the mayor.
"There won't be a special team or any special activities".
Lazio Governor Nicola Zingaretti said the regional
government has suspended the awarding of all contracts
while it conducts an internal investigation to find possible
mafia infiltration there.
Among those put behind bars Tuesday was the Roman
mobsters' alleged leader Massimo Carminati, a former member of
the NAR neofascist terrorist group and of the Banda della
Magliana crime gang.
The organisation alleged made millions by rigging
contracts in fields including waste management, park
maintenance, migrant and refugee reception centers (CIEs) and
Roma camps.
Salvatore Buzzi, a former manslaughter convict who headed
cooperatives implicated in the scandal, seemed to boast about
how much profit his gang was making off scamming city settlement
centres.
"Do you have any idea how much I make on these immigrants?"
Buzzi allegedly says in a wiretap from early 2013 contained in
prosecution documents.
"Drug trafficking is not as profitable. We closed this
year with turnover of 40 million but...our profits all came from
the gypsies (Roma people), the housing emergency and the
immigrants".
Interior Minister Angelino Alfano said Thursday that the
probe does not mean that the whole city is tainted.
"My assessment is that Rome isn't a rotten city," Alfano
told Mediaset television.
"Rome isn't a dirty city, it's a healthy city. If someone
stole, they should be punished, without criminalising a whole
community and a whole city, which is healthy and strong".
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