European Commission Vice President
Antonio Tajani on Monday said he doubted whether an Italian
justice decree to battle financial misdeeds and reinstate false
accounting as a crime would be a good idea.
The June decree was announced this weekend after arrests in
a corruption probe related to Milan Expo 2015 pressured the
executive to further crack down on organized crime and financial
crimes.
"I don't know if it is good news or not. The Italian penal
code undergoes a lot of changes. Even the policy that the
Italian government follows - for example, State accounting to
not pay companies - even that is false accounting, thus the
discussion is much broader," said Tajani, an Italian politician
who is running in this month's European elections as a member of
Silvio Berlusconi's opposition centre-right party, Forza Italia
(FI).
Tajani, who spoke on Radio Citta' Futura, responded to
statements made Sunday by Interior Minister Angelino Alfano and
Justice Minister Andrea Orlando regarding a justice reform
package to give more power to Anti-Corruption Commissioner
Raffaele Cantone, as well as introduce the crime of
'autoriciclaggio' - an extended money-laundering to include
additional cycles of licit investment for ill-gotten gains - and
reinstate criminal penalties for false accounting, which was
largely struck from the code under a centre-right government led
by Berlusconi and FI in the early 2000s.
Tajani said Alfano, his ex-party colleague and Berlusconi's
former dauphin, had waffled on the issue.
"Alfano was first against it and has become favourable.
Everyone has the right to change his mind in life," Tajani said.
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