Italy's Environment Minister Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio denied Friday that he had accepted gifts from companies involved in the removal of rubbish in Naples and other allegations of receiving bribes, according to dpa. "I'm a shocked," said Pecoraro Scanio, adding that he was willing to forsake immunity as a member of parliament and fight any charges resulting from the allegations in court. Pecoraro Scanio was reacting to news reports that he had been placed under investigation by prosecutors in the southern Italian city of Potenza. The probe stems from telephone conversations intercepted by prosecutors in Potenza in which employees of a travel agency discussed several of the minister's holiday travel and accommodation arrangements, Italy's main newspapers said Friday. The Visetur travel agency which has been awarded contracts for organizing several of Pecoraro Scanio's official visits arranged the minister's stay in a luxury hotel in Milan over the Christmas holidays, the Corriere della Sera daily said. The minister's Milan hotel bill was allegedly picked up by Visetur, while several private trips abroad made by the minister were allegedly paid for by businessmen who late last year wanted to tender for a contract to transport rubbish from Naples to a incinerator they owned in Greece. The tender contract was never awarded, Corriere della Sera said. Pecoraro Scanio, a Green Party member of Romano Prodi's outgoing centre-left government, has faced numerous calls for his resignation since rubbish started to pile up in and around Naples late in December 2007. Rubbish removal trucks stopped operating after the city's landfill sites were full, leaving many streets full of rubbish. Pecoraro Scanio and other officials blamed the crisis on the local mafia which they said handles the illegal disposal of refuse in Naples. Reports of the probe came just over a week before parliamentary elections on April 13-14 in which Pecoraro Scanio is a candidate for the Left Rainbow coalition of Communists and Greens.
