(ANSA) - Premier Silvio Berlusconi announced over the weekend that he is working on new legislation to impose strict limits on the use of telephone wire taps by the Italian judiciary.
He said the draft law, which would be presented to the cabinet after the summer recess, would target both those investigators who used wire taps and those newspapers who published them.
Berlusconi's announcement came after many private conversations between protagonists in an ongoing financial scandal involving the Bank of Italy found there way into Italian dailies. "There has been a violation of the rights of Italians," he said to journalists from Porto Rotondo, where he is on holiday.
"The publication in newspapers of private telephone conversation is absolutely scandalous."
Berlusconi said he envisaged prison sentences of between five and 10 years for breaches of privacy involving unjustified use of phone taps. He said only probes into terrorism and the Mafia merited the practice.
