Money for nothing

Italian Political Party Gives Away Nearly $2 Million

The Panella List led by Marco Panella, formerly the Radical Party, considers state funding to be legalised robbery. The party gave each person producing an identity card 50,000 lira - about seventeen pounds.

BBC Correspondent Francis Kennedy reports
(dur 2'20")

Radical politician Marco Panella at the great give-away

People began queuing at dawn to be first in line to receive the crisp new banknotes, which were rubber-stamped with a message to say the money represented loot stolen by the government that was now being returned to the people. Many recipients said they were going to spent it on a good meal.

Within the first two hours more than a thousand people, ranging from pensioners, to young people, to immigrants, were rewarded for their time spent sweltering in the summer heat in queues.

The party says it will continue disposing of its money -- received as a government subsidy under a law for the public financing of political parties -- in other Italian cities in the coming weeks.

State funding of political parties in Italy was abolished in a referendum in 1993, but re-introduced by the Italian parliament earlier this year.