The Northern League's Fabio Rizzi, a Lombardy regional councillor, was arrested on Tuesday in relation to a probe into alleged corruption in contracts at Lombardy hospitals.
A businessman considered close to Rizzi, Mario Valentino Longo, was arrested and taken to jail too.
Rizzi's wife has been put under house arrest, as has
Longo's, and police searched for evidence at the councillor's
home and at regional offices.
The probe concerns a series of public contacts for the
outsourcing of hospital dentistry services.
Rizzi, 49, is an anesthetist by professional who has been
a councillor since 2013 and was a Senator from 2008 to 2013.
He is the chair of the Lombardy regional assembly's
health committee and the architect of a reform of the region's
health system commissioned by Governor Roberto Maroni, a fellow
League member.
In total, 21 people were arrested or otherwise had
precautionary measures taken against them on Tuesday in
connection with the probe.
They are being investigated for various crimes including
corruption, interfering with the public procurement process and
money laundering.
The contracts at the centre of the investigations were won
illegally by a group of four businessmen with the complicity of
11 public officials, Carabinieri police sources said.
"On the institutional level (news of Rizzo's arrest) is
another strong blow to this regional council's credibility,
which we are trying to regain," Speaker Raffaele Cattaneo said.
The anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) called on
governor Maroni to resign.
"The relationship between politics and health care needs to
be torn apart," echoed the PD's Lombardy Secretary Alessandro
Alfieri.
"Maroni must acknowledge his failure to guarantee
discontinuity with the past and the only way to do this now is
to go to the polls," Alfieri said.
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