ROME, July 16 (Xinhua) -- Italy's Interior Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Angelino Alfano on Tuesday denied knowing it until after the expulsion of the wife and daughter of Kazakh dissident Mukhtar Ablyazov from the country.

"I am here to report about an episode of which I was not informed," Alfano said in a formal statement to parliament after examining a police internal report disclosing the operation, adding that no government minister had been informed before the deportation.

Alma Shalabayeva and six-year-old Alua were taken into custody by police at the end of May after what they defined as nighttime a raid into their house in Rome, and were sent back to Kazakhstan on a private plane.

In a testimony published by the Financial Times, Shalabayeva said that tens of plain-clothes "gangster-like" police mistreated her and her daughter.

"At no point during the operations did any Italian official have information that Ablyazov was a political refugee and not a dangerous fugitive," Alfano stressed.

Ablyazov, an outspoken critic of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, was fugitive since 2009. According to the Kazakh government, the wealthy businessman is not a dissident but an outlaw under investigation for allegedly embezzling billions of dollars at BTA Bank, a big commercial lender operating in Kazakhstan.

Alfano, who was particularly called out in the case for his ministry's role as head of the police force, insisted that Shalabayeva neither applied for political asylum in Italy nor even showed a residence permit.

The interior minister normally is not informed of the frequent expulsions from the country, that are managed by the chief of staff and chief of police, he added.

Earlier in the day, the chief of staff at the interior ministry, Giuseppe Procaccini, resigned over the controversial deportation. He was reportedly contacted by Kazakhstan's ambassador to Rome in relation to the police operation before it took place.

On Friday, Italy's parliament is set to examine a call for Alfano to resign from opposition parties Left, Ecology and Freedom (SEL) and Five-Star Movement (M5S), which highlighted media entrepreneur and three-time premier Silvio Berlusconi's role in the case after he helped foster trading ties between Italy and oil-rich Kazakhstan during his office as the former Italian prime minister.

Alfano, being also the head of Berlusconi's center-right party People of Freedom (PdL) that shares power with the center-left Democratic Party (PD) in the current coalition government, could not be unaware of the expulsion, SEL and M5S said accusing the interior minister of mismanaging the case.

According to media reports, Berlusconi, who is now a member of parliament upper house and still very much pulls the strings behind the government, met with Nazarbayev in the Italian island of Sardinia earlier this month. The reports suggested close dialogue between the two leaders, although the former premier denied any talks.

After the expulsion was brought to light, the Italian government admitted last week that mistakes were made and revoked the expulsion order, saying that Shalabayeva and her daughter could return to the country.