Newsgroup: it.politica
Titolo: fazio - newsweek

 
Private Lies, Public Figures
Rampant wiretapping exposes some juicy secrets.
By Barbie Nadeau
Newsweek International
Sept. 19, 2005 issue - Antonio Fazio is not the type of man most Italians
associate with corruption. Governor of the Bank of Italy, the 69-year-old
father of five is the very picture of civic rectitude, with a loving wife
and a reputation for fairness and scrupulous honesty. Or is he? When a
transcript of an illicit midnight telephone call landed on the front pages
of the country's newspapers last month, Italians couldn't get enough.
Eavesdropping on Italy's powerful elite has become a national pastime, and
Fazio's late-night call was script-perfect:
"Did I wake you?"
"No, no," said Gianpierro Fiorani, chief of Banca Popolare Italiana.
"I've just signed it," said Fazio, referring to a legal document that, with
his imprimatur, could be used to thwart a Dutch takeover of one of Italy's
largest financial institutes, Banca Antonveneta.
Fiorani was delighted. "Ah, Tonino," he glowed. "I'm overcome with emotion.
Thank you. Thank you. I have goose bumps. Tonino, I'd like to kiss your
forehead."
With the Dutch sidelined, Fiorani's bank was able to secure Banca
Antonveneta earlier this summer for 5.5 billion euros. But then the
transcripts leaked out, and within hours both the deal-and Fazio's
career-were all but history. Yet the affair didn't end there. In another
intercept from the frantic corporate coupling, Fazio's wife, Maria Cristina,
is heard comforting not her nerve-racked husband, but Banca Popolare's
Fiorani. "Relax," she coos, spelling out the word suggestively.
"Thanks, dear," he purrs back. Italians could only wonder at the intimacy of
it all.
The Fazio debacle is just the latest in a steady stream of investigative
wiretaps leaked to the Italian tabloids and mainstream press in recent
months. And thanks to what Justice Minister Roberto Castelli calls "total
anarchy" with regard to electronic eavesdropping, there is definitely more
to come. A report called "No Secret," issued in August by the research firm
Eurispes, estimates that the Italian government has paid 1.3 billion euros
over the past five years to the nation's phone companies, directing them to
listen in on their most select clientele. At one point last year, the
Eurispes report charges, one mobile-phone company had 7,000 taps in place.
The government's eavesdropping business has grown so large that it must
outsource much of the transcription work. The result: leaks, often for hefty
fees, of the most luscious details of private lives and legal proceedings.
Evidence from the taps is used increasingly in Italian courts. Voice
matching is considered as conclusive as DNA testing, and testimony (or
confessions) over the phone can seal a verdict. In the past several months,
Italy has caught several big-name criminals, including Hamdi Issac (a.k.a.
Osman Hussain), the would-be London bomber whose calls to his brother were
traced for days before his arrest in Rome on July 29. Before that, taps led
to mafia and Red Brigades arrests and a handful of white-collar detentions
for crimes ranging from bribery to corruption. In late June, Milan
magistrates issued arrest warrants for 13 supposed CIA agents for the
alleged rendition kidnapping of Imam Abu Omar in Milan, all based largely on
mobile-phone taps and traces over the course of a year.
Lately even Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has been swept up in the
frenzy. On Aug. 14, La Repubblica published excerpts of a phone call between
two of Italy's most influential businessmen, Stefano Ricucci and Emilio
Gnutti. In them, Gnutti brags about his cozy relationship with the prime
minister and outlines his plans to "press" Berlusconi to help them buy RCS
Mediagroup, which owns Corriere della Sera, Italy's largest newspaper.
Needless to say, Berlusconi's government has made its displeasure clear-and
may take steps to rein in errant wiretapping. Under the current regulations,
prosecutors can authorize taps for any number of suspected crimes. Only
members of Parliament are exempt. And once the transcripts have been handed
over to defense attorneys, they are considered public information-though
it's usually the transcribers and typists who come across the hottest
tidbits and sell them to the press well before they are introduced as
evidence in criminal cases. In the Fazio case, no charges are even pending
yet.
Berlusconi has promised to change all that. New laws to be introduced this
month would authorize government wiretapping only for mafia or terrorism
investigations. Transcripts would be confidential, and anyone selling or
publishing excerpts (including local and international press) would face
five to 10 years in prison. The proposed changes are not likely to pass, if
only because critics of the legislation include members of Berlusconi's own
governing coalition. The Northern League's Robert Maroni told NEWSWEEK that
the legislation won't pass, adding: "These measures are far too restrictive
and might actually be detrimental to public security." Nor is there any
shortage of people who suspect that Berlusconi's interest in restricting
such fare is chiefly to protect himself.
Berlusconi will have none of that, saying he is more concerned with the
privacy of everyday citizens-an astounding 30 million of whom have been
tapped in the past decade, according to the Eurispes report. "This violates
the rights of Italians," the prime minister told reporters from his vacation
home on Sardinia, denouncing the publication of private conversations as
scandalous. "We are not a civilized country if we can read in a newspaper
what a lady tells her boyfriend or her husband." Oops. Did he just spill the
beans?
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9287439/site/newsweek/#storyContinued

 
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9287439/site/newsweek/#storyContinued
Per fortuna oggi Fazio ha spiegato alla
stampa come stanno veramente le cose:
[...]
Antonio Fazio e' apparso rilassato, poco prima della cena con i
banchieri centrali del G10, iniziata intorno alle 20:00 al 18/mo del
palazzo della Bri. "Ma quante belle ragazze!", ha commentato il
responsabile di via Nazionale riferendosi alle giornaliste che lo
stavano interpellando, senza aggiungere altro. (AGI)
[...]
http://it.biz.yahoo.com/050911/203/3dtoj.html
-- 
Stardust®
L'italiano che è di Forza Italia e onesto non può essere intelligente.
Colui che è intelligente e di Forza Italia non può essere onesto e
quello che è intelligente e onesto non può essere di Forza Italia.


mi sarei aspettato frasi del tipo:
"Gerhard, tu che hai esperienza di mogli, dacci qualche consiglio su come
trattare le donne".
"siamo dei grandi playboy, quindi tutti i nostri ragazzi mandano almeno
dieci messaggi al giorno alle loro tante ragazze"
"Rispolverai anche le mie qualità di playboy e feci la corte alla Presidente
finlandese".
vabbe' non e' piu' allineato con le veline ........