Massimiliano Di Giorgio

Italy’s Green Party leader and outgoing environment minister, Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio, is under investigation for allegedly accepting free flights and hotels, but denied the corruption charges

ROME, Italy; April 8, 2008.- The 49-year-old minister’s Green Party was part of Romano Prodi’s coalition government that collapsed in January. He is now Italy’s caretaker environment minister, pending the outcome of a general election scheduled for April 13-14.

A court in Potenza, southern Italy, is investigating Pecoraro Scanio, an aide to him, a local travel agent and a former magistrate over the alleged exchange of free travel and accomodation for his help in securing public-sector waste disposal contracts for local firms.

Pecoraro Scanio’s spokesman Giovanni Nani denied the allegations, and said the minister first learnt of the investigation via newspaper articles published on Friday.

“Clearly the minister has never been directly involved in any contract, let alone with waste disposal,” he added.

Nani said it was no coincidence the case had been made public “a week ahead of the election”.

The Greens and their communist allies are participating in this election as the Rainbow Alliance, separate from Prodi’s much larger Democratic Party.

The red-green group is a distant third in opinion polls behind Silvio Berlusconi’s first-placed conservative People of Freedom party and Walter Veltroni’s PD.

(Reuters)

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