Not all of Italy, only the South. That's why the biggest party in the north is a secessionist party. A lot of cool stuff comes out of the North, like Arduino.
Also, I bumped into a lot of Lega Nord people (the secessionist party) while I lived there and generally found them to be little more than racists and fascists. When I had to obtain my Permesso di Soggiorno, a group of us, all english turned up on the same day. We were all given 2 year stamps, except my black friend. They would only give him 6 months. I found the north of Italy to be jaw dropingly racist across the board.
At least, that was my experience. Don't get me wrong, I love Italy, but it's only because I let myself be blissfully ignorant of it's fundamental flaws when I'm there.
I was born and still live in Veneto and the amount of racism against immigrants (lately it's common to blame the Chinese, North Africans and Romanian for everything wrong in society or economics) is depressing.
Obviously, being Italian doesn't make me an expert in corruption from a legal point of view, but I am pretty positive to know a bit about Italian mentality and facts confirm that corruption is as common in the North as it is in the South (I can cite my sources, if necessary.)
So even if it isn't ironclad evidence it definitely moves the posterior probability towards 'expert'.
The current governor of lombardia and the whole council is in a corruption and vote marketing scandal.
The head of the secessionist party for the last twenty years left his role after it was found out he and his son had been using the party as a revolver bank account.
And, noticeably, the Dear Leader Silvio Berlusconi is from milan.
There is a lot to say on the north vs south in italy, but saying "northern italy is not corrupted" is as silly as it gets.
I meant abusive as in "abusive financial practices", a synonim for illegal (per merriam webster), not abusive as in "physical abuse".
Please excuse this non native speaker for making something look worse than it was :)