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ROME - An Italian magistrate asked parliament for permission to use phone tap evidence after accusing some of Prime Minister Romano Prodi's top allies of involvement in a criminal scheme over a bank takeover bid.
Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema, and Piero Fassino, head of the main party in Prodi's coalition, the Democrats of the Left, are among six parliamentarians on 68 phone calls the magistrate, Clementina Forleo, wants to use in her investigation.
While the six deny wrongdoing and are not officially under investigation, the affair is embarrassing for the government which is more used to delighting in prosecutions involving right wingers, especially opposition leader Silvio Berlusconi.
Forleo asked parliament to let her use the bugged phone conversations between politicians and financiers who tried to buy a bank in 2005 that the opposition says shows the centre left tried to exert undue influence over business.
Italian legislators do not have immunity from prosecution but their phone conversations have privileged status, which means a magistrate needs parliament's approval to use them. Phone taps are widely used by Italian investigators.
Forleo, investigating if there was market-rigging and insider trading, said in her submission to parliament the politicians "by all appearances were not passive receivers of information ... but knowing accomplices in a criminal scheme".
Her comments angered those involved and prompted President Giorgio Napolitano to urge magistrates to exert restraint and "not insert into procedural documents evaluations and remarks that are not pertinent or are excessive".
Justice Minister Clemente Mastella opened an internal government investigation.
"I have no objection to parliament accepting Forleo's request to use the phone taps," said Fassino. "Forleo has every right to do so, but she does not have the right to establish in advance unfounded judgments which are damaging to my dignity."
D'Alema and Fassino's phone conversations with the then chairman of insurer Unipol, Giovanni Consorte, have already been splashed across the media, showing them encouraging him in the takeover bid.
In one, Fassino asks Consorte: "Do we own a bank?" In another D'Alema tells the banker: "Go on, make our day!"
Unipol, which is controlled by cooperative firms with close ties to the Democrats of the Left, was trying to buy the BNL bank which was later bought by France's BNP Paribas.
Phone taps played a key role in the resignation of former Bank of Italy chief Antonio Fazio who was also shown to be close to a bidder in the banking takeover flurry that started in 2005.
- REUTERS
