Off the wire
• East Africa to launch regional e-passports in March  • Int'l donations down due to PNA political views: Palestinian minister  • Urgent: Gold falls on U.S. equities rebound  • Germany's benchmark DAX index closes down  • ECB foreign exchange rates of euro to other currencies  • At least 19 people die of swine flu in Finland  • Tanzania receive 130,000 Burundian refugees since April  • UN peacekeepers in Central African Republic accused of committing four new sex abuse cases  • Gas blast in Russian residential building kills seven  • Norway to remain reliable, long-term supplier of gas to Europe: oil minister  
You are here: 　 Home

Roundup: 21 arrested in northern Italy for corruption in health system

Xinhua, February 17, 2016 Adjust font size:

A total of 21 public officials and businessmen were arrested or otherwise cautioned in Italy's Lombardy region on Tuesday in a probe into alleged corruption in the local health system.

Among the arrested was regional councillor and health committee head Fabio Rizzi, who was also the creator of a recent reform of the healthcare system in Lombardy.

The local press defined Rizzi, a 49-year-old anesthesiologist who was a Senator from 2008 to 2013, as the "right hand" of Roberto Maroni, President of Lombardy region. They both belong to Northern League, a rightist and regionalist party.

According to investigators, Rizzi along with his wife - who was put under house arrest - and other people were involved in the illicit assignment of public contacts for the outsourcing of hospital dentistry services.

All of them were investigated for crimes including corruption, money laundering and interfering with the public procurement process, Milan-based Corriere della Sera newspaper said. The business was estimated to be worth more than 400 million euros (over 445 million U.S. dollars).

It also emerged from the investigation that Rizzo's 2013 election campaign was funded by one of the arrested entrepreneurs, Maria Paola Canegrati, who had many businesses in the local health system, by way of compensation, LA7 television channel's newscast said.

The probe, which started in 2013 after another corruption scandal in the health system hit Lombardy region and its then president Roberto Formigoni in 2012, led to calls from the opposition for Maroni to resign.

Lombardy is considered the wealthiest region of Italy and its wealth system the most developed in the country.

"The relationship between politics and health care needs to be torn apart," the Lombardy Secretary of Italy's ruling Democratic Party (PD), Alessandro Alfieri, was quoted by ANSA news agency as saying.

"Maroni must acknowledge his failure to guarantee discontinuity with the past and the only way to do this now is to go to the polls," Alfieri stressed.

"I am very pissed off about what happened, I am pissed off also because the work we are doing in these years is muddied with actions such as these," Maroni told his regional council.

"This story that hurts me deeply gives me the strength to step up controls and we will make a special plan on the correct application of procedures, we will check every bid, every hospital," he pledged. Enditem