Italian magistrates slammed a trial cap bill that moved through parliament on Wednesday, saying it was unparalleled compared to other countries and would have “devastating” consequences on the justice system, reports ANSA.

The Comitato Intermagistratura, a committee representing penal, civil, administrative, accounting and state magistrates, said the bill would wipe out “hundreds of thousands of trials with extremely high costs to society and to the state”.

Among the cases affected, it said, would be the massive 2003 Parmalat and Cirio bankruptcies and corporate raider assaults on the BNL and Antonveneto banks a few years ago in which thousands of shareholders have filed for compensation.

Also on the list of threatened trials, it said, were Europe’s first corporate murder trial for work accidents, at Turin’s ThyssenKrupp steelworks where seven workers died in a fire in 2007.

The bill, which moved from the Senate to the House Wednesday, “risks provoking devastating consequences on the entire system of Italian justice,” the committee said.

“It is a de facto amnesty on crimes committed before May 2, 2006,” the committee said, “a full-fledged whitewash would will ensure complete impunity for typical white-collar crimes and also many insidious forms of widespread crime against weak people”.

The Comitato claimed the bill “does not have an equivalent in any other European legislation at a European or international level”.

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