ROME, Jan 17: The chairman of Italian car giant Fiat SpA, Cesare Romiti, was on Friday ordered to stand trial on corruption charges involving kickbacks allegedly paid during the building of Rome's metro.Lawyers for Romiti, a driving force behind Fiat's dramatic turnaround in the last two decades, expressed astonishment at the latest twist in a long-running legal saga.
"We are amazed and incredulous at the reopening of a judicial affair which, in five years, has already resulted in three acquittals, going right up to the Court of Cassation (Italy's highest court)," the lawyers said in a statement.
"It is surprising that, even though no new element has emerged from the investigations which followed the dropping of charges, the same judge who had previously decided to acquit has not confirmed his favourable verdict." Prosecutors allege Fiat paid 3.23 billion lire ($1.9 million) between 1983 and 1992 in bribes to political parties in exchange for contracts to construct the Rome subway.
A Rome court threwout the corruption case against Romiti in July 1994, a ruling backed by an appeal court in April 1995. That decision was upheld by the Court of Cassation later that year, but the prosecution then formulated different charges. Romiti, 74, was sentenced last April to 18 months in prison by a judge in Turin for false accounting, but the sentence was effectively suspended until the lengthy Italian judicial process is complete and he may never serve the jail term.
The Rome judge on Friday also ordered Umberto Beliazzi, the `former head of Fiat in the capital, to stand trial on corruption charges and sentenced the firm's financial director Francesco Mattioli to 20 days in prison for involvement in the same crime.
Romiti is one of the highest-profile business figures to fall foul of the law since Italy's so-called "clean hands" anti-graft drive began in 1992.Magistrates last month asked for former Prime Minister and media mogul Silvio Berlusconi to be sent for trial in connection with a probe into alleged
corruption of Rome magistrates.
Berlusconi, leader of the centre-right Freedom Alliance political bloc, had already been found guilty of false accounting and faces trials in three other, separate cases.
Fiat, whose turnover accounts for three percent of Italian gross domestic product, was founded in 1906 by Giovanni Agnelli. It began by making and selling cars but gradually expanded its operations to a wide range of activities.
Romiti joined the company in 1974 and took over as chairman in 1996 when Gianni Agnelli, now honorary Chief, turned 75. Romiti began a successful partnership with Agnelli in the mid-1980s and as managing director was his right-hand man as Italy's largest private industrial group took tough measures to reshape and restructure.
Romiti, dubbed "il duro" (the hard man) in the Italian press for his tough management style, this year reaches the company's mandatory retirement age of 75. But there are question marks over his successor after the untimely death last year of Gianni
Agnelli's nephew, Giovanni Alberto Agnelli.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
