Anyone invited to join a conspiracy in Italy needs to remember the golden rule: do not talk about it on the phone. It sounds simple enough but Italians appear to have difficulty in respecting it.

The evidence about a match-fixing scam involving top football club Juventus was collected by eavesdropping policemen. For eight months they are said to have listened to 100,000 phone conversations of Luciano Moggi, Juventus' Mr Fix-it. The football executive's extensive network of acquaintances included footballers, referees, magistrates, government ministers and most of the upper echelons of Italian football administration.