Bosses put Italy's corruption bill at 300 billion euros

Italy would be 300 billion euros better off if it had acted decisively against corruption at the time of a major scandal two decades ago, according to an eye-opening new report from the country's business bosses. Employers organisation Confindustria said the failure to implement effective measures to stamp out endemic bribery and kickbacks in public and business life has acted as a costly restraint on growth without which the economy could be nearly a fifth bigger than it now is.
In a report titled "Corruption: Dead-weight on Development," Confindustria's in-house think-tank CSC attempts to quantify the impact of the ultimately ineffective response to "tangentopoli" a vast system of corruption uncovered in 1992. The resulting "clean hands" investigation led to the indictment of half the country's lawmakers, many convictions and several suicides among prominent business and political figures. But 22 years later, Italy remains way behind comparable countries in terms of its success in controlling corruption, according to every international survey on the subject.