As an Italian Private Investigator who for decades deals with corruption and bribes cases, I can state that nothing can stop the corrupted, not even the coronavirus.

The corruption and bribes are an endless topic. Many companies, clients of my Italian Private Detective Agency, are literally afflicted by them and often ask my intervention in order to check the level of corruption of their collaborators. Sometimes its level is so low that it is considered as acceptable and I am convinced that monitoring of the bribes is the only way to check their collateral damage.

The only alternative method at the intelligence work of my Italian Investigation Agency suggested by the company experts is to periodically change suppliers and never ever send them too many orders, but at the end of the day it leads to multiplication of bribery transactions and to suppliers who are scarcely motivated to improve the quality of their products or services, because the financial benefit they obtain is very relative (especially including the necessity of paying the bribe).

 

In the early days of my Italian Private Detective Agency, being occupied with the defensive or civil party investigations in cases related to Tangentopoli and clean hands, I remember my predictions in which I stated that all the work of judges would only substitute the people and the bribery practices, but it would have never stopped the corruption. And sadly, I was right: nothing can stop the world immersed in the corruption, not even the pandemic of coronavirus.

 

Once upon a time, in the times of coronavirus, the municipality of Nichelino had to prepare itself for the sanitization of its buildings. In order to do that, it appealed to the specialized local companies through a trusted employee of the municipality, who turned out to be not as trusted as it had seemed. In fact, the man, in the role of “the president of the commission of the regional tender for the custody of the cleaning services of the real estate and additional services with reduced environmental impact”, entered into a negotiation on how big his bribe should be to entrust the task to an Apulian sanitation company where his son had worked.

 

Probably as a result of an anonymous tip (from my experience as the Italian Private Investigator, the most of the corruption and corporate disloyalty cases come out thanks to the reporting), the financial police were able to seize the municipality worker and an employee of the sanitation company in the act of exchanging two bribes of 5,000 and 3,000 euro.

 

The Mayor of Nichelino Giampiero Tolardo commented outraged: “We cannot hide our astonishment about the behavior which, if proved, thoroughly embitters, aggravated also by the tragic moment that is passing through the country even on the eve of the Day of the fight against the mafias on 21 March”.

This time the corrupted mechanism was stopped, but somebody has to explain to Tolardo that it is like sweeping the sea. Or maybe not, he probably knows it already.