Telecom Italia won’t take legal action against the CEO at the helm of the company during separate wiretapping and fraud scandals.
The telco’s board decided to drop action against former chief Marco Tronchetti Provera on the back of legal advice given after an internal review of a money laundering scandal involving the firm’s Sparkle subsidiary, and a separate wiretapping probe.
Only one director opposed abandoning the cases, the firm stated.
Reports in the local press said the internal review blasted Provera and his fellow executives for not implementing sufficient control over managers Reuters reported.
That view tallies with the conclusions of an investigation by prosecutors in Milan into the wiretapping scandal in 2006, which also involved Pirelli – the firm Provera now heads up.
Prosecutors did not pursue the former chief due to a lack of evidence in the case, which saw the two firms gather hundreds of files on magistrates, businessmen, politicians, football players and referees.
The Sparkle case involves seven executives from the TI subsidiary and Swiss-owned ISP FastWeb, who are accused of orchestrating a €2 billion tax fraud and money laundering scam.
A trial against the directors – who prosecutors allege sold phantom broadband services to companies in the US, UK and Finland – began in November, after lawyers for the defendants skipped customary preliminary hearings.