An Italian cabinet minister was called on to offer "clarification" on Thursday after it emerged that several private detectives have been arrested on suspicion of spying on his political opponents.
Opposition politicians demanded that the government report immediately to parliament on the affair, which focuses on Health Minister Francesco Storace.
Premier Silvio Berlusconi said "the truth must be found."
Milan prosecutors believe spying operations and illicit searches of official databanks were carried out for Storace's staff in 2004 and early 2005, newspapers reported on Thursday.
Storace, a member of the rightwing National Alliance party, was president of the Lazio regional government at the time and preparing to stand for re-election.
Prosecutors suspect political espionage was carried out in order to help Storace's chances in the April 2005 vote.
Private detectives are said to have monitored two of his opponents in those elections: hard-right politician
Alessandra Mussolini, the granddaughter of Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, and the centre-left candidate Piero Marrazzo, who went on to win the election.
Prosecutors reportedly came across evidence of the spying during a wider probe into what they said was a web of corruption involving traffic in private information. Some 16 people were arrested on Wednesday in connection with the probe. They included 11 private detectives, three police officers and two employees of the Telecom Italia phone company.
According to prosecutors, the detectives paid the policemen and Telecom staff to give them private information about the legal status and telephone calls of people who were of interest to their clients.
Most of the information was believed to be for industrial espionage.
The investigation ballooned after starting with an enquiry into the case of a company executive in Milan who was anonymously sent a CD containing private phone conversations as a form of intimidation.
Storace railed against the two newspapers which had linked his name to the Milan investigation, saying there was a "shameful" plot by the press and the political Left to discredit him and the centre right.
"It's highly irritating and I'm ready to challenge anyone over this," he said, claiming the reports amounted to
defamation. He said the investigation in question went back to 2004, arguing that at that time neither Marrazzo nor Mussolini had announced their bids to run against him. Explaining how he came to have contact with Pierpaolo Pasqua, one of the private detectives who were arrested, he said: "He just carried out some screening for us because we were afraid we were being spied on during our electoral campaign."
Pasqua and associate Gaspare Gallo, who run a Milan-based private eye agency, are also under investigation
by Rome prosecutors. The probe in the capital is looking into cases of unauthorised access into Rome city council's database shortly before 2005 regional elections.
Mussolini, who heads a small hard right party, said she was shocked to read in the newspaper that prosecutors suspected she had been spied on. "I often saw people with cameras outside my front door
but I thought they were just people who were curious. Now I read in the papers that these spies were paid by someone. I'm horrified."
The centre-left opposition demanded explanations from the minister himself.
"He can't just ignore it seeing that investigators felt they had to involve people very close to him in the probe," said Piero Fassino, leader of the Democratic Left.
