Antonio Di Pietro
| 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 |
| Deputy | Antonio Bargone Gianni Francesco Mattioli |
| Preceded by | Paolo Baratta |
| Succeeded by | Paolo Costa |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
October 2, 1950 Montenero di Bisaccia, Italy |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Political party | Independent (2014–present) |
| Other political affiliations |
Italy of Values (1998; 2001–2014) The Democrats (1999–2001) |
| Profession | Politician Judge |
Antonio Di Pietro (born October 2, 1950) is an Italian politician. He was a minister in government of Romano Prodi, a Senator and a Member of the European Parliament. He was a prosecutor in the Mani Pulite corruption trials in the early 1990s.
Di Pietro was born into a poor rural family from Montenero di Bisaccia, Molise, Italy. As a young man he travelled to Germany where he worked in a factory in the mornings and in a sawmill in the afternoons to pay for his studies. He graduated from night school in Italy with a degree in law in 1978 and became a police officer. After a few years, he started a judicial career as a prosecutor.
In February 1992, Di Pietro began investigating Milan's politicians and business leaders for corruption and kickbacks. 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. 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. The Italian press named the investigation "Tangentopoli" ("Bribesville").
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. However, Di Pietro was accused by Craxi of having provoked a "false Revolution", and of investigating only some politicians, ignoring the opposition parties. Only in 2012, Di Pietro admitted that Craxi was right when during the Enimont trial he accused the Italian Communist Party of having received illegal funding from the Soviet Union. Craxi's sentences seemed to him "criminally relevant", but Di Pietro omitted to investigate that crime.
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