Italy's ongoing political crisis and corruption scandal have taken on tragic overtones, as two of the country's leading industrialists linked to the chemical industry have committed suicide. The former head of ENI, the Italian government-owned energy and petrochemicals company, Gabriele Cagliari, 67, committed suicide in Milan's San Vittore prison on July 20. He had been in custody for 133 days and had told Italian magistrates that ENI paid kickbacks—including funds from its Enimont venture—to political parties. He charged in a suicide note to his family that the magistrates would not grant him bail unless he implicated more people. Just three days after Cagliari's suicide, Raul Gardini, 60, the flamboyant former head of the Italian holding group owned by the Ferruzzi family, shot himself. The Ferruzzi group includes the Montedison conglomerate, which is heavily involved in chemicals. Testimony to magistrates by Gardini's associate Giuseppe Garofano, former Montedison chairman, meant that Gardini would ha...