| Onorevole Antonio Di Pietro | |
|---|---|
| Minister of Infrastructures | |
| In office May 17, 2006 – May 8, 2008 |
|
| Prime Minister | Romano Prodi |
| Deputy | Angelo Capodicasa |
| Preceded by | Pietro Lunardi |
| Succeeded by | Altero Matteoli |
| Minister of Public Works | |
| In office May 17, 1996 – November 20, 1996 |
|
| Prime Minister | Romano Prodi |
| Preceded by | Paolo Baratta |
| Succeeded by | Paolo Costa |
| Personal details | |
| Born | October 2, 1950 Montenero di Bisaccia, Italy |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Political party | Italia dei Valori |
| Profession | Politician Judge |
Antonio Di Pietro (born October 2, 1950) is an Italian politician. He was a Member of the European Parliament, an Italian Senator, and Minister of the Prodi Government. He was a prosecutor in the team known in Italy as Mani Pulite (Clean Hands) in the early 1990s.
Contents |
Born into a poor rural family from Montenero di Bisaccia (Molise), as a very young man Di Pietro would go to Germany to work in the morning in a factory and in the afternoon in a sawmill in order to pay for his studies. Back in Italy, he graduated from night school[1] with a degree in law in 1978 and was admitted to serve as a police officer. After a few years, he started a judicial career as a prosecutor.[2][3]
In February 1991, Di Pietro began investigating Milan's politicians and business leaders for corruption and kickbacks.[4] Together with other well-known magistrates such as Francesco Saverio Borrelli, Ilda Boccassini, Gherardo Colombo, and Piercamillo Davigo, he worked on the Mani Pulite ("Clean Hands") team, which investigated political corruption.[5] As part of this team, he investigated hundreds of local and national politicians, all the way up to the most important national political figures, including Bettino Craxi.[1] The Italian press named the investigation "Tangentopoli" ("Bribesville").[6]
He soon became the most popular of the Mani Pulite judges, due to his peculiar way of speaking, with a number of dialectal inflections and expressions, coupled with a pronounced accent and a determined disposition.
When the Tangentopoli investigation focused on Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Di Pietro became the focus of a slander campaign and strong political pressure, leading him to resign from the judiciary.[4]
Di Pietro was also known for being one of the first Italian prosecutors to use digital technologies in his work, using computers and visual presentations, which raised some protests (for example, by advocate Guido Spazzali). Di Pietro soon became interested in information technology (IT), and used it actively in his work. Instead of taking classics—in Italy, the usual high-school education for lawyers—he had studied to become an electronics technician (though he has never taken a computer course).[7] He still maintains an interest in IT, with his blog[8] and YouTube conferences.
Once he uttered a famous sentence to describe his own behaviour: "As a bricklayer I tried to build my walls straight, as a policeman I tried to arrest criminals, and as a judge I tried to bring people to trial when there was good reason to do so."
After the Mani Pulite investigations resulted in the disbandment of the previous ruling parties (first of all, Democrazia Cristiana), Di Pietro was called into Romano Prodi's new governing team as minister for Public Works,[4] with responsibility for the areas most affected by bribery—all the initiatives financed by the state. Here he tried to impose a controversial project which would have doubled the main national motorway between Bologna and Florence. It provoked violent opposition by inhabitants of the interested areas. Ecologists, who had supported Prodi's coalition, protested the plan, which would have destroyed Apennine valleys and woods.
Romano Prodi had previously been the subject of an investigation run by Di Pietro, but the charges had been dropped before any trial.
Di Pietro came under investigation himself in 1997 for his activities both in the police and as a judge. It was later found that the main prosecutor handling Di Pietro's case, Fabio Salamone from Brescia, was the brother of a man that Di Pietro himself had prosecuted, and who had been sentenced to 18 months of jail for various corruption charges. Although it took some time for the authorities to realize this, Salamone was eventually allocated other duties and, after years of trials, Di Pietro was eventually cleared of all charges.
After being cleared, Di Pietro started a political career, something he had previously excluded on the grounds that he did not want to exploit the popularity he had gained while doing what he perceived to be just his duty. He was elected to the Italian Senate in a by-election caused by the resignation of a senator, and defeated right-wing journalist Giuliano Ferrara in the Mugello constituency, a left wing stronghold.
He later founded his own movement, Italia dei Valori (Italy of Values), making its main theme the fight against political corruption in Italy. As a protest against the growing tolerance of corruption in most Italian political parties, and the complacent attitude of left-wing politicians like Massimo D'Alema towards Berlusconi, he did not run alongside the left-wing coalition in the Italian general election of 2001, which was won by Silvio Berlusconi's coalition.
Di Pietro's movement collected just short of the nationwide four-percent limit necessary for entry to the Lower Chamber of the Parliament under proportional representation, and gained a single senator—who immediately defected to Berlusconi's party.
Running alongside the former leader of the Italian Communist Party and founder of the Democratic Party of the Left, Achille Occhetto, he received two seats in the European Elections of 2004. The other seat is currently taken by Giulietto Chiesa, a journalist.
Di Pietro was one of seven candidates for leader of the left-wing coalition The Union for the general election held on October 16, 2005—eventually won by Romano Prodi—in which he obtained 3.3 percent of the votes, ranking fourth.
On May 17, 2006 Di Pietro was appointed Minister of Infrastructures by Romano Prodi, as part of his new government.
He is a member of the Bureau of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe and sits on the European Parliament's Committee on Legal Affairs. He is also a substitute for the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs and chairs the Delegation for relations with South Africa.
On January 30, 2006 he published a letter in the Italian newspaper L'Unità, in which he promised to work for a law that will prohibit anyone from being elected more than twice consecutively (although he has been an MP since 1996), and prohibiting anyone who has received a definitive sentence from becoming a candidate in elections.
In September 2010, Di Pietro harshly criticized Berlusconi and the parliament for approving a controversial tax amnesty bill.[9]
In December 2006, Di Pietro started a vidcast on YouTube, a video sharing website. In the vidcast, issued weekly since January 2007, Di Pietro talks about the issues discussed in the weekly Government Cabinet.[10] Other prominent politicians, such as Angela Merkel of Germany, had released one-off vidcasts, but this was perhaps the first time that a minister of a government in office had a regular vidcast.
| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Paolo Baratta |
Italian Minister of Public Works 1996 |
Succeeded by Paolo Costa |
| Preceded by Pietro Lunardi |
Italian Minister of Infrastructures 2006-2008 |
Succeeded by Altero Matteoli |
| Assembly seats | ||
| Preceded by Title jointly held |
Member of the Italian Senate Legislatures XIII 1997 - 2001 |
Succeeded by Title jointly held |
| Preceded by Title jointly held |
Member of the Italian Chamber of Deputies Legislatures XV, XVI 2006 - present |
Incumbent |
| Party political offices | ||
| Preceded by New Party |
President of Italy of Values 1998 - |
Incumbent |
|
|||||||
|
|
|||||||