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'Every judicial move I make is interpreted as being against somebody'

Italy's white-knight magistrate resigns

ITALY

Paddy Agnew, Rome

Mr Antonio Di Pietro, the magistrate who has become Italy's best-known corruption investigator, resigned yesterday, prompting a probable political storm.

Mr Di Pietro has been a key figure in the celebrated, nearly three-year Tangentopoli inquiry that brought down Italy's corrupt Christian Democrat and Socialist old guard.

In a letter to his superior, Milan's chief prosecutor, Mr Francesco Severio Borelli, Mr Di Pietro said he hoped his resignation would "depersonalise" the Milan-based Tangentopoli enquiry, adding that he was tired of "being used" by many different shades of political opinion.

The letter went on: "Every judicial move I have made has been interpreted as being against somebody or something... For that reason, in a spirit of service and with death in my heart, I am leaving the judiciary."

Mr Di Pietro's resignation is the most obvious manifestation yet of tensions between he Tangentopoli pool and the right-wing government of the prime Minister, Mr Silvio Berlusconi.

Last July the government was forced to drop proposals banning the use of preventive detention, a key element in the investigative methods of Mr Di Pietro and his colleagues, when its proposed emergency legislation prompted widespread public protests.

At the time, opposition forces suspected Mr Berlusconi of wishing to block the Tangentopoli investigation into his own $ 7 billion Fininvest company. Indeed shortly after the failed government decree, Mr Berlusconi's Fininvest employee, Mr Salvatore Sciascia, were arrested, charged with paying bribes to tax inspectors.

Two weeks ago Mr Berlusconi himself was notified that he was under investigation on possible corruption and bribery charges.

In the meantime, however, the government is fighting back at the magistrates, by sending in judicial inspectors to assess their work, and with a Supreme Court decision last week which moved the section of the Tangentopoli inquiry relative to Mr Berlusconi away from the Milan magistrates and awarded it to their colleagues in nearby Brescia.

Mr Borelli said last night that the Milan pool would continue its investigative work, despite Judge Di Pietro's resignation. But the fact that a man who had become a symbol of reform found himself forced to resign was a point underlined by the industrialist, Mr Carlo De Benedetti, one of many public figures to regret Mr Di Pietro's resignation. He said: "If Di Pietro is to resign like this, then we 've lost one of the key figures in the Italian revolution...a man who was a symbol for all Italians. His resignation could have very negative consequences for Italy's image."

The opposition leader, Mr Massimo D'Alema, secretary of the Democratic Left (PDS), blamed the government. "This resignation is proof that apart from proving a failure in its social and economic policies, this government is involved in creating a climate of restoration of the old corrupt system," he said.

Mr Di Pietro was hard at work in Milan yesterday, concluding the state's case in the Enimont trial, Italy's "mother of all corruption cases". Twenty-four defendants, including the former Prime Minister and Socialist leader, Mr Bettino Craxi, and the present Northern League leader, Mr Umberto Bossi, are accused of having accepted illegal payments into party offers by the Montedison chemical group.
