Baku-APA. A former Italian economic development and interior minister, Claudio Scajola, was detained on Thursday on charges of helping a fugitive convicted for mafia links, APA reports quoting Xinhua.
"From the investigations, it repeatedly emerged that Scajola was in close relations with Amedeo Matacena and his wife for the purpose of favoring him in fleeing Italian justice," Public Prosecutor Federico Cafiero De Raho told a press conference in the southern city of Reggio Calabria.
"In their phone conversations, they were talking about where Matacena -- a former MP who was convicted for mafia links -- could escape," he added. Libano was found by investigators to be the probable destination country for the fugitive.
According to Cafiero De Raho, who issued a total of eight arrest warrants on the case, Matacena was part of "a network of complicity" at "high levels" thanks to which he was able to avoid arrest.
Scajola, 66, a member of three-time premier Silvio Berlusconi's center-right Forza Italia (FI) party, was arrested at a Rome hotel where he was staying in. According to local reports, he appeared "disconcerted and upset," and asked the reasons why he was being detained.
"What strikes all of us is how a public figure who has held so significant positions of responsibility could take care of a person who has been convicted to five years in prison for mafia association and who has become a fugitive to escape punishment," Cafiero De Raho went on to say.
The arrest must be therefore a "breathing space" for Italians to realize that "everybody is equal before the law and there are not privileged categories," the public prosecutor added. Police also seized around 50 million euros (69 million U.S. dollars) in the operation.
"I am pained ... I do not know for what reasons he has been arrested," Berlusconi said in a radio interview. Berlusconi denied that his earlier decision not to put front Scajola in the upcoming European Parliament elections was linked to the arrest. A "survey" indicating that Scajola's presence would have led to a loss of votes for the party was behind the decision, he said.
Thursday's was only the latest of a series of judicial problems for Scajola, which started early in 1983 when he was the mayor of Imperia, a city in northern Italy, and arrested on charges of bribery.
In 2002, he was forced to resign as interior minister of Berlusconi's second government after he made derogatory remarks, sparking controversy, about slain labor ministry aide Marco Biagi.
Later, Scajola also had to step down as economic development minister from Berlusconi's third government in 2010 because of a scandal related to a shady real-estate deal involving a luxury home with a view on Rome's Colosseum.
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