Lack of Safeguards Enables Italy Corruption, Report Says MILAN - Corruption can "flourish almost everywhere" in Italy because of flaws throughout society, the global anti-corruption organization Transparency International said Friday. Its report was a broad indictment of both public and private institutions, giving the country barely a passing grade over all. The study did not measure existing corruption, but rather the effectiveness of safeguards against it. Italy falls short on many counts, said Lorenzo Segato, director of the Research Centre on Security and Crime, based in Torri di Quartesolo, which carried out the study on behalf of Transparency International. Those include questionable institutional integrity, weak control mechanisms, biased news media and a social code that condones certain illegalities. Civil society, he said, "is not morally educated towards integrity and is mostly unable to exercise powers of control" over public administration and politicians, Mr. Segato said. This is a weakness of society. Morality is imposed through repression rather than through creating the conditions for a more transparent society, he said. "Italians respect what they are forced to by law," he said. The current situation "is insufficient to guarantee" a transparent system, Mr. Segato said. The report looked at how institutions, from Parliament and political parties to the government's anti-corruption agency, perform in terms of transparency, integrity and accountability. Mechanisms put in place to fight corruption are easily circumvented, the report said, while Italy's legal framework is often complex, contradictory and at times "controversially implemented." Two decades ago, Italy was caught up in a corruption scandal that effectively swept away much of the political class that had governed the country since the end of World War II. The aftermath of that political earthquake did not, however, deliver the kind of legislation that would stamp out the widespread illicit behavior that had become synonymous with doing business in Italy. The slew of investigations currently under way in various Italian regions have been compared to the investigations of the early 1990s because of their scope and because they involve politicians of all stripes. "If anything, politicians are more incestuous in their relationships," said Claudio Gatti, the co-author of "Il Sottobosco," or "The Undergrowth," a book about political corruption that was published this week. Not only is there corruption but behind the scenes, the left, right and center are doing business together. It's an underclass of people who are living off public works. Luigi Giampaolino, president of the State Audit Court, said recently that corruption was "notably present in the country, its dimensions, presumably, much greater than those that come to light." State audit officials say that every year, corruption costs Italy around €60 billion, or $80 billion. "If you add what is lost from tax evasion, and the proceeds related to organized crime, we reach unimaginable numbers, and that means that corruption is widespread and persistent," said Senator Felice Casson, a former prosecutor in numerous corruption trials and a lawmaker with the Democratic Left party. "This isn't just a question of ethics, but one of economics that has particular impact in a moment of financial crisis," further eroding investor confidence in Italy, he added. Italy ranks 69th out of 183 countries on Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index, which measures perceptions of public sector corruption. The Transparency International report makes several recommendations, calling for an independent anti-corruption agency, more effective penalties for politicians and public sector employees who breach codes of conduct, as well as reinforced anti-corruption legislation. The Italian government is drafting an anti-corruption law that should be put to Parliament in the coming weeks. But early drafts have faced strong resistance among some parties that form the broad coalition supporting Prime Minister Mario Monti's government of technocrats, most notably the Peoples of Liberty, the party of Silvio Berlusconi, who resigned as prime minister in November. Critics say that the laws passed during the years when Mr. Berlusconi dominated the government drastically weakened the judiciary's ability to fight corruption. "My impression is that there is no real will on their part to fight corruption," Senator Casson, the former prosecutor, said of Mr. Berlusconi's party. "And so I think it will be very difficult to agree" on an effective anti-corruption law.