The government of Italy is set to introduce harsher penalties for those involved in cases of false accounting and misleading corporate statements.

Yesterday, an Italian government cabinet proposed a bill which detailed new measures that increase prison sentences from two to four years for those implicated and responsible for issuing false and misleading corporate information, Forbes.com reported.

The new bill also removes a proviso stating that a crime is not punishable if it does not affect a company's pre-tax results by more than 5 percent or its net assets by more than 1%.