Half of all Italians Secretly Wiretapped !!!!!!
The Scotsman Reuters
By Gavin Jones
Italians already soaking up the early summer sun at the seaside are
engrossed in exactly the same beach reading as last year -- newspapers full of
details of secretly recorded telephone conversations of famous people.
Last year it was
finance, this year it's soccer. Last year the prime "victim" was
former central bank chief Antonio Fazio,
this year it's Luciano Moggi,
the former general manager of Italy's most successful club, Juventus.
Fazio was suspected by
prosecutors of insider trading. Moggi is being probed
for alleged match fixing. They were both forced to resign by the publication of
transcripts of embarrassing but often entertaining taps.
"I locked
the referee in the changing room and took the keys to the airport, now they'll
have to knock down the door to let him out," Moggi
boasted to a friend on the phone after "kidnapping" a referee whom he
judged had penalised Juventus.
"Tonino, I'm moved ... I have goosebumps
... I'd like to kiss you on the forehead," disgraced banker Gianpiero Fiorani famously told
the supposedly neutral Fazio after he had approved Fiorani's bid to take over a rival bank.
Yet neither Fazio nor Moggi have been charged
with any crime and many Italians believe the taps, and particularly their use
by the media, are a voyeuristic abuse of defendants' rights.
The transcripts
are thought to be leaked either by the prosecutors' office or by clients'
lawyers. The publication of transcripts of Moggi's
phone calls is illegal because the investigation is still ongoing.
A suspect exposed
to public ridicule can be forced from office even if he is innocent and in any
case has less chance of subsequently defending himself in the courts, the
critics say.
"We are
supposed to be a nation of civil guarantees, the phone taps are barbaric,"
said seven-times prime minister Giulio Andreotti, who
was finally acquitted two years ago after more than a decade of Mafia-related
trials.
In Italy, a
country of around 60 million people, nearly 30 million might have had phone
calls recorded in the past decade, according to a study by the Eurispes research institute.
Advocates of wire
taps say many high profile arrests, particularly of elusive Mafia fugitives,
would not have been possible without the help of phone interceptions.
But centre-left
senator Antonio Polito is one of many lawmakers who
believe the use of the taps and their publication have
gone far beyond what the law allows.
He is planning to
set up a parliamentary inquiry into the problem, which he describes as
"the biggest risk to (Italian) democracy since Fascism."
MOUNTAIN
OR MOLEHILL?
Despite these
concerns,
A gravel-voiced,
cigar-chomping wheeler-dealer, he looks perfectly cast for the role.
Yet Antonio Di
Pietro, the former prosecutor who spearheaded the Italian Clean Hands
corruption probe that brought down an entire political class in the early
1990s, said there was scarce evidence of the "sporting fraud" the
investigators suspect.
"From a
legal point of view I think we'll see a mountain has been made out of a
molehill," Di Pietro said last week.
Former Prime
Minister Silvio Berlusconi has often dismissed data
on
Moggi had six, and in the
2004-5 football season prosecutors reportedly tapped 100,000 of his phone
calls, averaging out at an astonishing 416 calls per day.
Justice Minister
Clemente Mastella has pledged to investigate reports
that a former employee of Italy's main phone operator, Telecom Italia, has
created a secret phone-tap database with 100,000 files on Italy's political,
economic and sporting elite.
"We cannot
live in
In
The
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