Undersecretary resigns after hotel-bill furore
Malinconico denies doing favours for probed businessman
10 January, 14:03
Malinconico said he had been unaware Francesco Maria De Vito Piscicelli has paid for some of his stays at a hotel in the Tuscan seaside resort of Porto Ercole until this was revealed by media reports and said he had ''never done favours for the people involved''.
Malinconico stepped down from the helm of the Italian Newspaper Publishers Federation (FIEG) in November to be part of Premier Mario Monti's emergency government of technocrats.
Piscicelli, who comes from an aristocratic Neapolitan family, is being probed for alleged irregularities regarding contracts for the 2009 G8 summit in L'Aquila.
He landed one of the lucrative contracts for building work for the 2009 World Swimming Championships in Rome, which have also been subject to investigation, shortly after Malinconico's stay at the hotel in 2007. At the time Malinconico was an undersecretary in the Romano Prodi centre-left government that was in power from 2006 to 2008. Piscicelli hit the headlines when wiretaps leaked to the press revealed that he laughed at the prospect of winning contracts for reconstruction after the 2009 earthquake in Abruzzo, which killed 308 people.
The embattled businessman is also currently on trial for bribery to land the contract for a new Carabinieri training school on the outskirts of Florence.
Piscicelli has denied any wrongdoing.
He is also being probed for landed his helicopter on a public beach north of Rome to take his mother out to eat.
Piscicelli claimed dangerous winds forced an emergency landing but critics accused the wealthy contractor of flaunting his opulence at a time when most Italians are cutting back due to the euro crisis.
Tuesday 10 January 2012
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(ANSA) - Rome, January 10 - Cabinet Undersecretary Carlo Malinconico resigned on Tuesday following a furore over hotel bills paid by a construction businessman who is under investigation for alleged corruption.
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