Mani Pulite investigations

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Mani pulite (Italian for clean hands) was a nationwide Italian judicial investigation into political corruption held in the 1990s. Mani pulite led to the demise of the so-called First Republic, resulting in the disappearance of many parties. Some politicians and industry leaders committed suicide after their crimes were exposed. The corruption system that was uncovered by these investigations was usually referred to as Tangentopoli, or "bribesville".

Other Fronts

In the meantime, the investigation expanded outside the political range: on 2 September 1993 the Milan judge Diego Curtò was arrested. On 21 April 1994, 80 financial policemen and 300 industry personalities were charged with corruption. A few days later, the secretary of the large Fiat corporation admitted corruption with a letter to a newspaper. In 1994, Silvio Berlusconi entered politics by storm and won the elections. Many think that this move was to preserve his many industries from possible corruption charges. This suspicion was reinforced on February 11, when Silvio Berlusconi's brother, Paolo, admitted to corruption crimes. On July 13 1994, the Berlusconi government made a new law to avoid jail time for most corruption crimes.

The law was carefully timed as Italy had defeated Bulgaria in the 1994 Football World Cup's semifinals, and it is likely that the government expected to exploit an eventual victory to pass the law under silence in a football-crazy country. However, as Roberto Baggio shot high the last penalty against Brazil, and the news was showing images of hated, corrupt politicians getting out of jail, the public opinion became enraged; the images of Francesco De Lorenzo, former minister of Health, were especially striking, since the general public perceived stealing money from hospitals an especially hateful act.

Just a few days before, the arrested policemen had been talking about corruption in the Fininvest media industry, the biggest Berlusconi family property. Most of the Mani pulite investigation pool declared that they would respect the state's laws, but they could not work in a situation where duty and conScience were to conflict: they requested therefore to be reassigned to other duties. Since the government could not afford to be seen as an adversary of the popular judge pool, the decree was hastily revoked and marked a "misunderstanding"; minister for internal affairs Roberto Maroni from Lega Nord maintained that he had not even had the occasion of reading it. While the minister of Justice was Alfredo Biondi, allegations that Cesare Previti, a lawyer from Berlusconi's company Fininvest, had written it, are at least credible.

On July 28 Berlusconi's brother was again arrested and immediately released.