mani puliti

Series of Italian anti-corruption investigations and subsequent trials, begun 1992; also known as the Tangentopoli (‘kickback city’) scandal. In the course of the investigations, many leading politicians, including former prime ministers and party leaders, were found to be implicated. The old political order, which was shown to have links with the Sicilian Mafia, was discredited and a new breed, based in Northern Italy, took power. Within months, they too were under investigation and the Milan-based industrialist Silvio Berlusconi, who assumed the premiership April 1994, held office for less than nine months before he resigned.

Former prime ministers Bettino Craxi and Arnaldo Forlani were convicted October 1995, and more than half the members of the Italia faced charges for accepting bribes worth more than 620 billion lire.

Two leading anti-corruption judges, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, were assassinated. Their chief surviving colleague, Antonio Di Pietro, eventually resigned, claiming undue government interference in his work. Di Pietro himself was accused of corruption but was subsequently cleared.

The first major trial ended April 1994 when Sergio Cusani, a financier for the Ferrzzi-Montedison industrial group, received an eight-year prison sentence for false accounting and violating the law on political funding.