(updates previous)
The second-highest-ranking
officer in Italy's tax police was put under investigation
Wednesday, reportedly for alleged corruption.
The news was revealed as investigators searched the offices
of General Vito Bardi at finance guard headquarters in Rome.
He is part of the same probe in which a Livorno tax police
commander, Fabio Massimo Mendella, was arrested earlier
Wednesday.
A Neapolitan accountant, Pietro De Riu, was also arrested
as a result of that investigation, on suspicion of taking bribes
of over one million euros from people wanting to avoid tax
inspections on behalf of Mendella when he worked in the province
of Naples between 2006 and 2012.
As for Bardi, it is not the first time he has been
investigated.
In 2011 investigators probed the general for alleged aiding
and abetting and disclosing State secrets in an
influence-peddling case known as the P4 affair.
The following year his case was closed at the request of
prosecutor Henry John Woodcock, the same prosecutor who ordered
the search of his offices on Wednesday.
At the center of the P4 case was Alfonso Papa, a former MP
in ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi's now-defunct People of Freedom
(PdL) party currently on trial for alleged conspiracy.
According to prosecutors Papa received classified
information about ongoing investigations and used it to
blackmail businessmen who gave him bribes.
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