Two doctors at a top Milanese nursing home killed five elderly patients by carrying out unneeded surgery to boost their fees, police claimed on Monday.
The doctors were identified as the head of the clinic's chest surgery department, Dr Pierpaolo Brega Massone, and one of his closest assistants, Dr Pietro Fabio Presicci.
They were taken to jail on suspicion of murder. Among the operations they performed was the removal of a lung which allegedly caused a patient to die.
Another 'murder' case, police claim, was that of an elderly woman who could have been saved by having a tumour wholely removed but instead underwent three separate operations which fatally weakened her while lining the two doctors' pockets.
A dozen other doctors and the director of the Santa Rita clinic and rest home were put under house arrest for performing superfluous and lucrative operations, mostly on terminally ill patients.
A young woman had a breast removed for no reason, police claimed.
The operations were carried out after clinic staff altered medical tests to obtain authorisation for the pricey and risky procedures from local health authorities, police said.
In some cases medical personnel were alleged to have boosted their salaries from around 2,000 euros ($3,200) a month to 27,000 euros a month ($43,000).
Among the suspect procedures were a dozen cases in which tuberculosis patients had lungs removed, police said.
Prosecutors said the use of wiretaps - currently at the centre of a political row - had been ''fundamental''.
In several cases the phone intercepts ''are striking in (showing how) the interest for (larger) remuneration is subordinate to the interests of the patient,'' they said.
Police said the cases of alleged murder would not have been detected without wiretaps.
Politicians are currently wrangling over Premier Silvio Berlusconi's pledge that the use and publication of wiretaps, except in terror and mafia probes, would be punished by five years' jail time.
The opposition and the national magistrates' union has stressed they are essential to investigations into many other serious crimes such as bribery and corruption, while the press has highlighted that the emergence of recent banking scandals would have been impossible without them.
Even members of Berlusconi's coalition have backed calls for wiretapping to remain a tool for major crimes.
All sides agree that the publication of irrelevant content, broadcast solely for titillating purposes, should be stopped.
