Pizza, pasta, bribery and corruption

Italy's courts are creaking under the strain of sleaze cases.

Is Italy more corrupt than its European Union partners? Are its institutions and people sleazier than the average? Is there any way of knowing?

Glancing at recent news reports, you would be forgiven for arriving at a definite yes for all of those questions. From north to south, the peninsula is suffering a dearth of honesty.

Ten traffic police officers in Caserta, near Naples, were arrested this week on suspicion of extorting bribes from motorists, in return for waiving tickets. When the officers were not racing to scenes of accidents to allegedly blackmail the guilty party, they were filing fake reports for truckers about theft from lorries, in exchange for a share of the merchandise.

Last week, five Red Cross volunteers in Sicily were arrested after hidden cameras in a warehouse showed them robbing food aid - milk, cheese, flour and rice - to be transported in ambulances and sold to supermarkets. Two of the suspects had used the food to supply their own bakeries.

A Sicilian court sentenced Corrado Carnevale, a former high court judge, to six years, for colluding with the Mafia by annulling mobsters' convictions. The Italian head of Coca-Cola's bottling plant in Albania, Cristina Busi, 52, was arrested for an alleged £14m tax fraud.

A Calabrian court ordered the arrest of the provincial government's president, Carmine Talarico, for suspected tax fraud, abuse of office and lying under oath. Four other men - businessmen and politicians - were also implicated in the plot to rip off public work contracts.

The vice-president of Tuscany's regional assembly was charged with demanding bribes for interfering with the provision of pharmaceutical contracts.

An investigation into alleged vote-selling by Cosa Nostra to candidates in last May's general election, led to 10 arrests. Five pounds per vote was the going rate, say prosecutors.

Marcello Dell'Utri, business partner of the prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, is on trial for Mafia collusion, and Giulio Andreotti, a former prime minister, is due to face the same charge in yet another trial due this September.

The list goes on. It is a catalogue of backhanders, scams, skimming, fraud and greed. Corruption infects every strata of society, a pall of sleaze hanging over the country.