Corruption Scandal Fells More High-Profile Italians

Racing like wildfire through the upper echelons of Italian society, a corruption scandal burned a prominent reformist politician and one of the country’s leading industrialists Thursday.

And in a country increasingly at war with its governing parties, Prime Minister Giuliano Amato announced a national referendum to seek a new political system.

But even as Amato won a grudging vote of confidence in a fractured Parliament, police in the countryside north of Rome found the body of a former director general of the ministry for state-owned industry. They listed him as the seventh suicide in the spreading year-old inquiry into illegal payoffs to political parties called “Operation Clean Hands.”

The politician who was burned was Giorgio La Malfa, 52, president of the small but influential free-market Republican Party and a former minister. He resigned after being formally notified that he was under investigation for violating laws on party financing.

As the scandal has gained momentum, a number of Republican officials have fallen prey to judges investigating widespread kickbacks for public works contracts.

The heavily implicated Socialist Party also has lost its leader, and three Cabinet ministers have resigned in the scandal.

The investigation shows an institutionalized corruption of staggering proportions in which illegal funding supported the lavish superstructures of the country’s political parties.

On Thursday, the scandal touched prominent industrialist Giampiero Pesenti, 61, president of a giant holding company with interests in cement, construction and real estate; he was detained, questioned and ordered held under house arrest.

Over the weekend, Sergio Castellari, a former leader in the ministry that oversees state industries who was wanted for questioning about a scandal at a state energy company, drove into the countryside north of Rome. He left a note in his car and took a pistol with him into nearby fields. He shot himself once in the head but was a long time dying, said police, who found his corpse Thursday.

In the Parliament on Thursday, Amato won a vote of confidence strictly along party lines.

Amato told legislators that a national referendum will be held April 18. Chief among 10 ballot questions are two that would radically change the electoral system, reforming it from the proportional scheme to direct elections.