(Adds detail from investigation, background)
By Manuela D’Alessandro
MILAN, April 3 (Reuters) – Italian magistrates have placed
the treasurer of the regional Northern League party and two
other people under investigation over accusations of fraud and
illegal party financing, the Milan prosecutor’s office said on
Tuesday.
In the latest in a long series of funding scandals to hit
Italian politics, Northern League treasurer Francesco Belsito is
accused by prosecutors of undocumented transfers of money to and
from party coffers.
No comment was immediately available from Belsito.
The Northern League, a vocal and frequently populist
regional party, is not part of the coalition which backs Prime
Minister Mario Monti in parliament and has been a loud critic of
his technocrat government’s economic reforms.
It is not clear whether the scandal will have any impact on
the political tensions facing Monti, but it could affect local
elections on May 6-7, and may also blunt the League’s frequent
and vocal attacks on waste and corruption in the south of Italy.
Prosecutors said they had uncovered transfers which included
personal payments for the family of Northern League leader
Umberto Bossi and they accused Belsito of running his office
“completely opaquely”.
“He provided the party treasury with funds that were not
accounted for and made payments and expenditures that were also
not accounted for or that were accounted for untruthfully,”
according to court documents.
The case is linked to allegations surrounding shadowy
payments to companies in Cyprus and Tanzania, and arose
following a separate investigation into organised crime activity
in Naples and Calabria.
The case could also prompt a major upheaval within the
League, a sometime coalition partner of former Prime Minister
Silvio Berlusconi, which has been split by a struggle for power
between Bossi and former Interior Minister Roberto Maroni.
Maroni immediately called for Belsito to resign as part of a
wider party cleanout.
“Even given the presumption of innocence, this investigation
should prompt our administrator to step aside,” Maroni told
reporters at the sidelines of a conference.
“We need to use this opportunity to clean things up. These
things hurt the party and hurt its members,” he said.
The scandal follows a separate probe into Luigi Lusi, former
treasurer of the now defunct La Margherita party which merged
into another formation and eventually helped form the Democratic
Party, currently Italy’s biggest centre-left force.
(Writing by James Mackenzie; EdEditing by Alison Williams)
