A court in Milan sentenced Luca Giuseppe Volontè, former member of the UDC and member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, to four years in prison for corruption, Il Fatto Quotidiano reports.
He is accused of abusing his function, receiving half a million euros from two Azerbaijani politicians to guide the vote and obtain the rejection of a report on political prisoners in the Caucasian republic, for the benefit of the Azerbaijani government.
Luca Giuseppe Volontè did not plead guilty and is going to appeal the ruling.
The investigation was initiated after a suspicious transaction report by an Italian bank concerning some transfers received by Volontè, representative of the Italian Parliament at the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly from September 2008 to June 2013, from British companies through Danske Bank in Estonia and Baltikums Bank in Riga in Latvia.
