ROME, Jan 15 (Reuters) – Italian finance police searched the headquarters of the country’s data protection agency on Thursday as part of an investigation into possible corruption and embezzlement, a judicial source said.
Rome prosecutors are investigating the agency’s president, Pasquale Stanzione, and three other board members over alleged excessive spending and possible corruption behind its decisions, Italian news agencies including ANSA as well as the judicial source, who did not wish to be named, said.
Stanzione, when asked by reporters to comment on the investigation, said he was “absolutely serene”.
The opposition 5-Star Movement said the agency’s credibility had been undermined and called for Stanzione to resign.
Stanzione declined to answer when asked repeatedly by reporters whether he would step down.
The data privacy authority, known in Italy as the Garante, is one of the European Union’s most proactive regulators in assessing AI platform compliance with the bloc’s data privacy regime.
It frequently takes initiatives – such as requesting information or imposing fines or bans – on matters affecting high-tech multinationals operating in the country.
Last week, it warned users and providers of artificial intelligence tools, including Elon Musk’s chatbot Grok, over the risk of generating deepfake images from real content without the consent of featured individuals.
It previously fined and briefly banned ChatGPT maker OpenAI over its use of personal data by the generative AI application, and blocked China’s DeepSeek chatbot after the company failed to address concerns over its privacy policy.
(Reporting by Marco Roberti, writing by Gavin Jones, editing by Susan Fenton)
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