The term has become ubiquitous in the Italian media: "dossieraggio," the use of confidential information to compile compromising dossiers against high-profile individuals. According to the Italian press, an investigation carried out by the Perugia (Umbria) public prosecutor's office has found that an officer at the Guardia di Finanza, the financial police, compiled confidential dossiers on hundreds of well-known people, including numerous politicians and several ministers. At the time this officer was working at the national anti-mafia and anti-terrorist directorate.
According to the National Anti-Mafia Prosecutor, Giovanni Melillo, and the Perugia Prosecutor, Raffaele Cantone, who spoke before Parliament on March 6 and March 7, the case could go much further. In light of the volume of data used, there could even be a wider network operating within the framework of a large-scale system for exchanging confidential information.
The origins of the scandal date back to the beginning of Giorgia Meloni's term in October 2022, when the opposition daily Domani published a series of articles on the business relations of future defense minister Guido Crosetto – which the journalists thought constituted conflicts of interest. After Crosetto filed a complaint, an investigation was launched into how the journalists had obtained the confidential information. The investigators traced the data back to the journalists' source, Guardia di Finanza officer Pasquale Striano. Striano had allegedly extracted information on Crosetto's banking transactions from confidential databases used in the fight against money laundering and organized crime.
New details have been emerging in Italian media. At the beginning of March media reported that 15 people had been targeted by the investigation, including the three Domani journalists who had written the articles and were now protesting, calling it an attack on press freedom. The investigation has also got a lot bigger. The Perugia public prosecutor's office has found that, in addition to Crosetto, some 800 people have been the subject of illegal searches, without it being known whether the information obtained was paid for or passed on for other purposes.
The President of the Senate, Ignazio La Russa, is among those targeted, as is the Minister for Enterprise and "Made in Italy," Adolfo Urso, the Minister for Agriculture, Francesco Lollobrigida, and the Undersecretary of State for the Presidency of the Council, Giovanbattista Fazzolari, who is very close to Giorgia Meloni. It's not just right-wing politicians: The two former council presidents Matteo Renzi, then head of the center-left, and Giuseppe Conte, of the 5-Star Movement have also been targeted, as well as businessmen and people from the world of entertainment.
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