ROME, March 15 (Xinhua) -- The upper house of the Italian parliament on Wednesday rejected a vote of no-confidence in one of the ministers in the center-left Democratic Party (PD) cabinet led by Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni.
Senators voted 161 against and 52 in favor of the motion, filed by opposition Five Star Movement (M5S) against Sports Minister Luca Lotti, after the official became involved in a corruption scandal.
Lotti is under investigation for allegedly tipping the managing director of the national agency for public contracts (CONSIP), Luigi Marroni, about an inquiry launched into the agency's activities.
The probe was launched by prosecutors in Naples, and transferred to Rome at the beginning of 2017. It focused on a public contract worth 2.7 billion euros (2.89 billion U.S. dollars) for which a CONSIP executive would have been bribed.
Lotti strongly denied any wrongdoing on Wednesday. "Facts are clear: I have never warned engineer Marroni, or any other person, about a probe into the CONSIP, and I have never leaked any information about such probe," the minister told senators before the voting session.
CONSIP's head Marroni, however, had indeed told prosecutors the minister had tipped him off about the investigation, and this had allowed him to get rid of wiretaps put in his office.
The scandal might have major repercussions on Italy's politics. Lotti is considered the right-hand man of former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who resigned in late 2016 after suffering a crushing defeat in a constitutional referendum.
Renzi will strive to regain the position of party head in primaries scheduled in late April, in order to lead it to the next elections in early 2018.
The probe has tarnished his and PD's credibility overall. The father of the former prime minister, Tiziano Renzi, has been put under investigation for alleged influence peddling. Prosecutors suspect him to have lobbied the CONSIP on behalf of a Naples-based businessman, who was arrested on charges of corruption on March 1.
