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Italy's Ischia Mayor arrested for alleged bribes

Xinhua, March 30, 2015 Adjust font size:

The mayor of the southern Italian city of Ischia was arrested along with 10 other people on Monday in a probe into alleged bribes, local reports said.

Giuseppe Ferrandino was suspected of taking bribes worth a total of 330,000 euros (about 357,539 U.S. dollars) from a local cooperative named CPL Concordia, according to prosecutors quoted by Rai State television.

The cooperative, which employs around 1,800 people, allegedly created slush funds in Tunisia to be able to pay Ferrandino and other officials for help in assigning public contracts. The mayor's brother Massimo Ferrandino was among the arrested.

According to ANSA news agency, CPL Concordia also paid money to members of Camorra, a powerful mafia-type syndicate based in the Campania region, in relation to the probe.

Il Fatto Quotidiano newspaper said later in the day that former Italian Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema was mentioned by a CPL Concordia manager in a wiretap among the probe's documents as a leader who "gave things" to the cooperative.

D'Alema, though confirming he had links with CPL Concordia, denied any wrongdoing, saying his relations with the cooperative were "totally transparent."

Ferrandino is a member of Democratic Party (PD), the center-left ruling party of Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.

Monday's arrests came a week after Renzi took over as the interim infrastructure and transport minister after Maurizio Lupi resigned amid another corruption scandal in public works. Endit