Mafia Accused Of Rigging Prison Guard Jobs Exam

The mafia has been accused of rigging a state exam for 400 prison guard jobs to get its own people inside the system.

Prosecutors in Rome are investigating widespread and organised cheating after 88 people were caught wearing bracelets or carrying mobile phone covers containing the answers to the test.

Some even had radio transmitters and earpieces through which it is thought they were given the answers.

The Camorra mafia, of the Campania region and its capital Naples, is based where a company printed the exams.

Prosecutors say it may have got hold of the answers because it has 7,000 gang members, including some 700 bosses, locked up behind bars.

The mafia clan is also thought to have sold the answers to other applicants for as much as €25,000 (£19,125).

The Justice Ministry wants to invalidate the exam results.

"It's shameful," said Donato Capece, the general secretary of Italy's biggest union for penitentiary workers, Sappe.

"We were the first ones to ask the ministry for clarity" after cheating was discovered, he said.

Some of the 7,700 people who took the exam in April staged a protest outside the Justice Ministry in Rome on Tuesday, demanding the government immediately hire 1,000 new prison guards.

Cheating in exams for public sector jobs is not uncommon in Italy.

Several criminal investigations have been launched in recent years, including into tests for a university professorship and to be a traffic police officer.