Jan 25, 2017
Italian prosecutors open criminal probe into BT scandal
Italian prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into BT's Italian business, compounding the troubles of the British telecoms company that this week revealed a larger-than-expected cost for accounting irregularities in the division. Mr De Pasquale is one of the most prominent Italian prosecutors, having led cases against public corruption in the 1990s against Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister, and Eni, the Italian oil and gas company, over alleged corruption in Nigeria. BT declined to comment on whether it, or former BT Italia executives, would be the subject of the investigation. The Italian investigation is the first external move to find what went wrong at BT Italia. The company had underestimated the depth of the scandal being unpicked by KPMG and issued a warning on Tuesday that unwinding the BT Italia accounts would likely cost £530m. That, combined with a fresh warning on the impact of falling UK public sector spending on its business, triggered the worst one-day collapse in BT's shares in 30 years, with the stock slumping by a fifth.
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