Four Google (NSDQ: GOOG) executives may be standing trial over failing to adequately monitor third-party content posted to their Italian language site. Italian prosecutors are preparing to file charges in a two-year old case against the Google employees over a video uploaded to the search giant’s Italian site, the Wall Street Journal is reporting.  Prosecutors are expected to charge the execs for defamation and violation of privacy after they failed to control the content of the site.

Google spokesperson Stefano Hesse said that the company has been cooperating with the authorities and had removed the video “within hours” of having been told of its presence on the site. The 191-second video shows four youths taunting their autistic classmate. He noted that under EU rules, and Italian law, the company isn’t required to monitor third party content on its sites, but takes down any offensive material when it is notified. The video sparked a huge outcry in Italy when news first surface of it in September 2006. At the time, the country’s education minister Giuseppe Fioroni called for the internet to be held to the same publishing or broadcasting standards as the country’s newspapers, TV stations and magazines, rather than be allowed to operate under “double standards” as just a distributor of information.

The target of the investigation includes Google’s legal representative and chairman of its Italian unit at the time; another Google Italy board member who has since left; its head of privacy policies in Europe; and its former head of Google Video for Europe. The Italian authorities are apparently going after these particular persons because they had the actual authority over the operations involved.

Google is facing a number of lawsuits across Europe over uploaded videos. In April, French TV network TF1 sued YouTube, claiming intellectual property infringement. Two months later, Spain’s Telecinco sued the site over the same issue. YouTube has agreed in court to remove videos requested by Telecinco.

• Spain’s Telecinco TV Channel Sues YouTube, Seeks Damages