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Italian Rogues of the Week: The Ligresti Family

Recently in Italy, a whole family of Italian rogues was arrested. That family was not some bunch of mafia mavericks, but the Ligresti family which was heavily involved in insurance in Italy. The business methods of the Ligresti family were somewhat unconventional and allegedly included unhealthy doses of market manipulation, otherwise known as insider dealing, […]

Italian Rogue of the Week: Roberto Calderoli

If you have not heard, Italian senator and Lega Nord politcian Roberto Calderoli caused a scandal this week in Italy after likening to Italy’s black minister Cécile Kyenge to an orang-utan. This is not the first racist storm Calderoli has been mixed up in either. After another bout of Calderoli racism, 11 people lost their lives. Calderoli’s […]

Rogues of the Week: The Berlusconi PdL Party

Yes, this week, a whole Italian political party, Silvio Berlusconi’s personal PdL party gets nominated as Rogues of the Week. Why? Berlusconi’s PdL party is holding Italy to ransom to save the skin of one single very rich man. After the definitive final appeal hearing in the Berlusconi Mediaset tax fraud case was set for July […]

Italian Rogue of the Week: Nunzio Scarano

Nunzio Scarano, if you have not heard of him, is a senior Italian cleric who worked within the Vatican Bank as an accountant until he was suspended from his duties around a month ago. Recently, this priest was arrested. Along with an Italian secret services agent and a financial broker, dodgy priest Scarano had been allegedly […]

Italian Rogue of the Week: Giovanni Vantaggiato

Actually, Giovanni Vantaggiato is much more than a rouge, he’s plain evil. Vantaggiato, for reasons which remain unclear to this day, planted a bomb outside a school in the southern Italian city of Brindisi. The bomb went off killing a 16 year old girl and injuring nine others. After being captured, owing largely to footage from […]

Italian Rogue of the Week – Marcello Dell’Utri

Marcello Dell’Utri, a close Silvio Berlusconi buddy, or at least he was – they appear to have fallen out – aside from being, allegedly, Berlusconi’s ‘mafia liaison officer’, stands accused of embezzlement in connection with the theft of rare and valuable books from one of Italy’s most prestigious libraries. Whether the roguish Dell’Utri will have the […]

Italian Rogues of the Week – The PD Party

Yes, this week, a whole political party receives the dubious honor of Italy Chronicles’ Rogue of the Week award. Now why would a whole political party merit such an award? Simple, because it’s trying to eliminate all political opposition. Italy’s PD party, which is supposed to lean to the left, but tends to flutter in […]

Italian Rogue of the Week: Roberto Formigoni

Roberto Formigoni

I doubt whether many outside of Italy will have ever heard of Roberto Formigoni. Even fewer will be aware that this gentleman, a former president of the Italian region of Lombardy, now a senator in Italy’s parliament and a deputy parliamentary commission member to boot, reputedly took a vow of poverty. Well, for someone who […]

Italian Rogue of the Week: Pier Luigi Bersani

For promising to reform and rejuvenate Italy and then doing the opposite and being instrumental in the re-election of Italy’s ancient president Giorgio Napolitano, as well as being a slave to Italy’s old guard political class, the now ex-leader of Italy’s centre-left political party, Pier Luigi Bersani, earns himself the title of Italian Rogue of the Week on […]