New Arrests Ordered in Italian Corruption Scandal : Law enforcement: Magistrates act after president refuses to sign a decree decriminalizing payoff practices.

With a controversial government attempt to contain a massive corruption scandal torpedoed by Italy’s president, magistrates around the country ordered a new wave of arrests and inquiries Monday in payoffs ranging from highways and hospitals to university construction and school lunches.

President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, whose duties are largely ceremonial, refused to sign a decree that would have effectively decriminalized illegal funding for political parties.

The weekend decree by the government of enfeebled Prime Minister Giuliano Amato would have reduced kickbacks to a civil offense punishable only by fine and restitution.

The measure drew lukewarm support from government parties, a ferocious attack as a whitewash from the parliamentary opposition and a formal letter of protest from magistrates in Milan who have directed the unprecedented yearlong investigation.

Called “Operation Clean Hands,” that accelerating crackdown has implicated about 1,000 politicians and business leaders in the decades-long, multibillion dollar scandal.

In new arrests Monday, a hospital administrator and five elected officials from three different political parties were jailed in the city of Pavia. A building contractor was arrested in Milan for paying bribes in exchange for a road project.

There were two arrests in Bologna over rigged school lunch contracts in Florence and new notifications in Rome over payoffs for construction of highways and a new state university.

Most of the arrests have come in the rich Italian north so far, but investigators say that tangenti (bribes) were standard operating procedure in virtually every major Italian city: no payoff, no contract.

Approved by Amato’s Cabinet, the disputed decree would have meant “total paralysis of investigations,” making it impossible “to establish facts and responsibilities,” six Milan magistrates said in a stiff communique issued Sunday night before Scalfaro’s decision.

An angry Judge Piercamillo Davigo was heard by Italian reporters to exclaim in Milan’s Palace of Justice: “Who’s ever seen a ruling class that absolves itself? Not even Nixon pardoned himself; he resigned and waited for his successor to offer a pardon.”

In refusing to sign the decree, which would have taken immediate effect, Scalfaro said he questioned its constitutionality. He invited Amato to submit it to Parliament instead as a proposed law, along with other pieces of a package intended to mute the political and economic consequences of the scandal.

A decision on whether to refloat the proposal as a law will come at a Cabinet meeting this morning that will feature either a new face or an empty chair. Environment Minister Carlo Ripa di Meana resigned to protest the decree.

Di Meana was the fifth Cabinet minister to quit the 8-month-old government led by Amato.