March 1993 — A bribery scandal leads to Bettino Craxi's resignation as Socialist Party (PS - Partito Socialista) leader. He flees the country to Tunisia and is tried and convicted in absentia. After one of his employees is caught taking bribes, the discovery of kickbacks to parties and politicians in exchange for public contracts brings the downfall of the Socialist Party. Nearly 1,000 politicians, bureaucrats, state industry managers and minor elected officials accused in the scandal, now referred to as 'Tangentopoli' or 'Kickback City,' are charged in connection with the paying of bribes in exchange for contracts. The bribes made the politicians wealthier and strengthened their hold on contracts for everything from airports to highways. This corruption scandal weakens the Socialist Party just before the elections and compromises its chances of winning.
Bettino Craxi was Italy's first Socialist prime minister after the Second World War, serving from 1983 to 1987.
March 1994 — Freedom Alliance (CDL - Casa delle Libertà), a center-right coalition that includes Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia, Northern League and neo Fascist National Alliance, wins elections.
April 1996 — Center left Olive Tree Alliance (L'Ulivo) wins elections and Romano Prodi becomes prime minister.
Sept. 15, 1996 — Head of the state run railroad, Lorenzo Necci, is arrested for corruption, embezzlement of funds, abuse of office, falsification of balance sheets and fraud. Necci admits receiving 20 million lire (US$14,645) from a financier Francesco Pacini Battaglia, who has also been arrested in the case. He claims the payments were for personal matters, but it is believed they are related to alleged payoffs by contractors doing business with the state railway. Seven people have been arrested and up to 50 people are investigated. Those suspected include prosecutors, lawyers and businessmen.
July 20, 2001 — Journalists covering the G8 summit of the world's industrialized nations in Genoa are brutally attacked by police. Official Italian orders compel the media to turn over photographs and audio/video tapes of the violence. Reuters, The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Italy's RAI state television network received such orders. Italian law does not allow appeals to the judiciary and imposes strict penalties on journalists who do not comply.
Police officers are responsible for the greatest number of attacks against journalists covering the anti-globalization protests during the summit, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
May/June 2001 — Silvio Berlusconi leads a center-right coalition to victory in the general election.
October 2002 — A controversial crime reform bill is passed by the lower house of parliament. Critics allege that the bill is intended to help Berlusconi avoid trial on corruption charges.
In September thousands of protestors crowded the streets accusing Berlusconi of using political power for personal gains and asserting that opposition parties are not doing enough to address the issue. The crime bill passed allows defendants to ask for their trials to be annulled or moved to another court if they have 'legitimate suspicion' that judges are biased against them.
November 2002 — An appeals court overturns the acquittal of former Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti and sentences him to 24 years in prison for killing Mino Pecorelli, a journalist whom he allegedly feared had found 'compromising evidence' about the politician. Andreotti was acquitted of charges that he is the Sicilian Mafia's protector in Rome back in 1999.
May to June 2003 — Berlusconi appears in court on his own corruption trial related to his business dealings in the 1980's. Berlusconi claims that he is victim of a conspiracy engineered by a politically motivated judiciary.
June 2003 — Parliament passes a law granting immunity to five holders of key state posts, including the prime minister from prosecution. Berlusconi's corruption trials subsequently come to a halt.
December 19, 2003 — Two teams of investigators probe the accounts of Parlamat, an Italian food giant, to determine if it filed a fraudulent financial statement. Eight people, including former Parlamat CEO Calisto Tanzi, are arrested. According to Italian prosecutors the company's accounts misstate at least US$8.75 billion, and could be misstated by US$16.25 billion, potentially the largest corporate fraud in history. Investigators claim interviewees detail a web of financial deception dating back more than a decade that was approved by senior managers.
January 2004 — The Constitutional Court scraps a law that provides political immunity from prosecution to Berlusconi and other prominent government officials in high posts. Berlusconi's government passed this law in 2003. Berlusconi's corruption trial resumes in April following this change.
May 2004 — A journalist in Sardinia reports that Prime Minsiter Berlusconi is transforming a grotto into a secret boat tunnel at his Villa Certosa property and questions whether legal permits have been obtained to do so. The following day, the interior minister claims that all matters related to the Villa are to be protected under a state secrecy law.
Dec. 11, 2004 — A close political ally of Berlusconi, Marcello Dell'Utri, is convicted of associations with the Sicilian mafia and sentenced to nine years in prison.
May 27, 2005 — Six police officers search the headquarters of Italy's leading national daily, Corriere della Sera. Officers look for documents the daily used as a part of its earlier report on the use of Italian pistols by militants in Iraq, according to Raffaele Fiengo, the cultural editor of the daily. The search is conducted after the newspaper refuses to disclose its sources to the authorities.
September 2005 — Berlusconi is cleared of corruption charges by a Milan court. Prosecutors had accused him of channeling money from a company called All Iberian to fund his political party and of false bookkeeping to cover up the transfers in 1991. The court's decision is based on the revised Italian penal law, which decriminalizes false bookkeeping. This change in Italian law was pursued by Berlusconi's political party, which was advocating for a measure to generally sanction false bookkeeping. Opposition parties have accused Berlusconi of amending the law to protect his own business interests.
December 29, 2005 — Prosecutors accuse Berlusconi of ordering the payment of 420,000 euros (US$600,000) to a British lawyer, David Mills, in 1997 to give false testimony against him in two of Berlusconi's trials on bribery, false bookkeeping and other charges. According to Correire della Sera, prosecutors accuse Mills of falsely testifying in a trial in which Berlusconi was charged with bribing tax officials to obtain favorable audits of companies belonging to his media group, Fininvest. Although Berlusconi was convicted in both cases in 1998, the verdicts were overturned on appeal. Mills is also under investigation.
December 2005 — Governor of the Bank of Italy, Antonio Fazio, resigns after he is accused of favoring an Italian bank's bid for Banca Antonoventa over an offer from a Dutch Bank, ABN AMRO. He is under investigation for abuse of power and insider trading.
March 11, 2006 —Berlusconi denounces the judiciary as a danger to democracy and promises changes to the system as he tries to win the premiership in upcoming elections in April. On a late night talk show he is heard making remarks in which he calls Italian prosecutors "the disease of our democracy" and says the judiciary "should be changed."
April 2006 — Bernardo Provenzano, Italy's most wanted man and suspected head of a Sicilian mafia, is captured by police.
Romano Prodi, center-left leader, wins closely fought elections. He is sworn in as prime minister in May.
April 7, 2006 — Mario Spezi, a freelance journalist for the Florence-based daily La Nazione, is arrested by officers with the Florence headquarters for investigating serial crimes. The arrests come on the orders of Giuliano Mignini, a public prosecutor in Perugia. Spezi is arrested without a warrant and denied access to a lawyer for five days.
Spezi had been investigating the serial murders of eight couples in Tuscany, killings that triggered a long and costly probe, which is still open. News reports say that he is under investigation for defaming Perugian prosecutors through the media. Substance and evidence supporting this allegation have not been clarified nor made public yet.
June 2006 — National referendum rejects reforms that provide the prime minister with more power. The reforms include reducing the size of the legislature, granting the premier the power to dissolve Parliament, as well as to appoint and fire cabinet members.
April 27, 2007 — An appeals court upholds the acquittal of Berlusconi on corruption charges. The case dates back to 2004 when a Milan court cleared Berlusconi of charges that he had bribed judges in connection with the sale of SME state food in the 1980's. The court cleared him on one count and said the statute of limitations had run out on a second, but the current ruling acquits him on all charges. In previous cases Berlusconi has either been acquitted of charges or has seen cases against him dismissed because of the statute of limitations had expired.
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