This kind of thing is rampant in Italy's public sector. They basically just found one of the worst offenders (i.e. the guy that half the public sector employee

This kind of thing is rampant in Italy's public sector. They basically just found one of the worst offenders (i.e. the guy that half the public sector employees aim to be) and are making an example out of him. If this wasn't broadly considered ok he wouldn't have gotten away with it for 15yr and they wouldn't be going back 15yr to find "alleged threats" he made. Based on my experience the threat was something along the lines of "you know if you take a hard stance on this misconduct your career progression is dead" which is something that not everyone has to be explicitly told but a situation that damn near every career public servant (not just in italy) will have to deal with at some point.