Former health minister Francesco Storace is being investigated by Rome prosecutors for unauthorised access into Rome city council's database shortly before 2005 regional elections, judicial sources said on Wednesday.
Storace, who last week was cleared by Milan prosecutors investigating another case of alleged political espionage, said his dignity was being trampled upon. The former minister said he had learned he was under investigation in Rome through news agencies and had not been formally notified by the Rome prosecutors of the probe. Storace resigned on March 11 in the wake of the Milan probe, saying his decision was a question of honour and a move to prevent the centre-left opposition exploiting the affair ahead of the April 9 general election.
"I find this situation intolerable," said Storace who was on the campaign trail for the right-wing National Alliance party.
"They(the Rome prosecutors) ought to at least let me know if I can continue campaigning or whether they will interpret my rallies around Italy as attempts to escape." According to the judicial sources, Storace is also being probed for possible involvement in falsifying signatures presented by an opponent's party in the 2005 election for Lazio regional president in which he was standing for re-election.
Electoral authorities had initially said that hard-right candidate Alessandra Mussolini could not stand in the Lazio region because many signatures presented by her party were false.
In order to participate in regional polls, small partiesneed to collect a certain number of signatures from people who want them to stand. In Lazio the minimum is 3,500. More than 800 signatures on Mussolini's petition to stand were declared false. The list included names of the deceased and others whose existence was dubious, such as people who gave their birth date as February 31.
Mussolini's small Social Alternative movement was in the end allowed to take part in the election but Rome prosecutors opened opened an enquiry into the incident. In the weeks prior to the start of the Lazio election campaign, Mussolini and Storace traded barbs for weeks, with accusations flying in both directions.
When Mussolini, granddaughter of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, was at first excluded from the election, her initial reaction was to claim that Storace had orchestrated the entire affair to keep her out of the race. These claims grew louder when it emerged that a company answering to Storace's regional administration had hacked into the computer archives of Rome city hall and checked hundreds of names on Mussolini's list of signatures.
Preliminary enquiries were inconclusive because the hacking took place after Storace's aides asked electoral authorities to re-examine Mussolini's lists. But Rome prosecutors began re-examing the case more thoroughly after private investigators were arrested in Milan earlier this month as part of a wider probe into political and industrial espionage accused Storace and his staff of involvement.
Last week, however, it emerged that private detective Pierpaolo Pasqua told Milan prosecutors that he "made up" the claim that Storace had asked him to spy on his political opponents.
Storace's party colleagues again rushed to his defence on Wednesday, saying news of the new probe had been "timed to coincide" withe the general elections. Opposition MPs urged Storace to "stop playing the victim" and convince prosecutors he was not involved.
