ROME (Reuters) - Years of recession in Italy have created fertile ground for corruption which is threatening the prospects of economic recovery, the head of the country's top public finance audit body said on Tuesday.

The remarks by the president of the Corte dei Conti, Raffaele Squitieri, highlight one of the chronic problems of the euro zone's third-largest economy, which has seen a series of corruption scandals over the past year as it has struggled to emerge from its worst downturn since World War Two.

"Economic crisis and corruption go hand-in-hand, in a vicious circle in which each is both the cause and effect of the other," Squitieri said in a speech in Rome.

He said corruption was undermining the prospects of "obtaining new impulses for a return to satisfactory levels of growth from public action".

Italy has dipped in and out of recession for the past six years, plagued by stubbornly high unemployment, weak institutions, low investments and chaotic public administration, but corruption has also been a persistent problem.

Last year, police arrested dozens of prominent politicians and business people over cases ranging from graft allegations in connection with the 2015 Expo in Milan and a 5 billion-euro flood barrier project in Venice to public contracts awarded by the city of Rome.

Italy ranked in 69th place in Transparency International's 2014 Corruption Perceptions Index, joint last in the European Union with Bulgaria, Greece and Romania.

In his speech, Squitieri said that Italy, which has barely grown over the past 20 years and whose economy is now below the level it was in 2000, had seen corruption spread as the crisis has dragged on.

"It is certain that the continuation of conditions of low growth, if not stagnation, as well as multiplying the difficulties of managing public budgets and thus of taking the necessary steps to confront the crisis, creates a terrain that is favourable for abuse and corruption," he said.