As Premier Mario Monti's emergency cabinet of technocrats is striving to rebuild Italy's trust in international markets, rampant corruption in the political system, however, poses a serious threat for the tottering country.

In the latest episode of the country's political scandals, police on Wednesday searched the offices of rightist Northern League party, suspecting that reimbursements of the electoral spending have been partly invested "for the personal needs of family members of the party leader," local media reported.

Over the past weeks, 10 out of 80 members of northern Lombardy regional council including its president and vice president have been arrested or put under investigation for frauds.

Recent scandals have involved politicians on all sides such as Filippo Penati, a member of the center-left Democratic Party, and former finance minister Giulio Tremonti's political right-hand man Marco Milanese, who was investigated for corruption and bribery.

Senator Luigi Lusi, former treasurer for the Margherita leftist party, was also accused of embezzlement for allegedly misappropriating at least 20 million euros (26 million U.S. dollars) from the party's coffers.

Analysts said in a country overloaded by a huge public debt, Italians would be especially angry with politicians who wasted public resources worth billions of U.S. dollars.

Many citizens have already complained that the tough packages of measures recently adopted by Monti's government, including new taxes and pension cuts, weighed on Italian families but did not cut deep enough into privileges of the political class.

According to Massimo Cacciari, leader of the liberal and federalist Toward North party and former mayor of Venice, the widespread political corruption was mainly a result of public financing of parties.

Cacciari told Xinhua that political parties should self-finance in a transparent way through their private members and activities, like in other countries such as the U.S., instead of using public money.

Thus only those political forces strongly motivated, with a genuine militancy and concrete projects would be able to making way, he said.

However, besides frauds in the management of funds, several recent bribery cases were also suspected to be the result of alliances between politicians and local mafias.

Italy's parliament is now drafting an anti-corruption law aimed at tightening sanctions, a necessary move to contain the widespread lawlessness described by Corte Dei Conti, Italy's legal auditors, recently as a very serious problem.

In fact, the Mediterranean country's credibility especially needed to be rebuild by political forces, as "the government is enjoying a high approval in poll analysis, while parties do not," Monti said last week.

The year 2012 is the 10th anniversary of Mani Pulite (Clean hands) movement, a nationwide investigation into the extensive problem of political corruption.

"But nothing has really changed," a noted historian Miguel Gotor told Xinhua.

"Corruption is a dramatic constant in the Italian whole system, and its high costs trigger dramatic inefficiencies at all levels," said Gotor, who is also a modern history professor at Turin University.

He highlighted the most serious form of corruption is the bad influence of organized crime, which also has economic control all over Italy. And many political crimes, the expert added, were a consequence of this situation.

Although the Italian judiciary is more independent compared to other countries, being obliged by law to investigate on any supposed offense, current rules are still unable to fight and contain the corruption problem, Gotor noted.

"Corruption creates big problems in terms of economic credibility, as the political world itself is a mirror of the society's weak points," said the expert.

In an interview to La Stampa newspaper on Wednesday, Monti himself called for Italy's urgent need to build a long-term "credibility," a fundamental ingredient to enhance its economic recovery and capacity to attract foreign investors.