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‘Envious’ sex shop bomber arrested

A 26-year-old man who allegedly bombed a sex shop in Calabria because he was "envious" of the owner's success has been arrested.

Published: 1 August 2013 10:50 CEST
'Envious' sex shop bomber arrested
The sex shop had been open a month when it was bombed in April. Photo: Inga Beretta/Flickr

Salvatore Infantino is alleged to have bombed the Vedova Nera Sexy Shop in the coastal town of Gioia Tauro just weeks after it opened in April, according to a report on Quotidiano.net.

The shop's owner put the attack, which cost the uninsured business €15,000 in damages, down to Infantino being "envious" of his success, Metropolis Web said.

Moral objection to a sex shop could also have been the bomber’s motive, other Italian media reported. 

The explosion was so powerful it damaged buildings and cars parked nearby.

Gioia Tauro has been hit by a number of bomb attacks in recent months, Il Quotidiano della Calabria reported.

Last September, a bomb exploded at a petrol station in the town, just five months after a furniture shop was hit. Car bombs have also been planted in the town.

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CRIME

Italy has most recovery fund fraud cases in EU, report finds

Italy is conducting more investigations into alleged fraud of funds from the EU post-Covid fund and has higher estimated losses than any other country, the European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO) said.

Published: 8 April 2024 17:05 CEST
Italy has most recovery fund fraud cases in EU, report finds

The EPPO reportedly placed Italy under special surveillance measures following findings that 179 out of a total of 206 investigations into alleged fraud of funds through the NextGenerationEU programme were in Italy, news agency Ansa reported.

Overall, Italy also had the highest amount of estimated damage to the EU budget related to active investigations into alleged fraud and financial wrongdoing of all types, the EPPO said in its annual report published on Friday.

The findings were published after a major international police investigation into fraud of EU recovery funds on Thursday, in which police seized 600 million euros’ worth of assets, including luxury villas and supercars, in northern Italy.

The European Union’s Recovery and Resilience Facility, established to help countries bounce back from the economic blow dealt by the Covid pandemic, is worth more than 800 billion euros, financed in large part through common EU borrowing.

READ ALSO: ‘It would be a disaster’: Is Italy at risk of losing EU recovery funds?

Italy has been the largest beneficiary, awarded 194.4 billion euros through a combination of grants and loans – but there have long been warnings from law enforcement that Covid recovery funding would be targeted by organised crime groups.

2023 was reportedly the first year in which EU financial bodies had conducted audits into the use of funds under the NextGenerationEU program, of which the Recovery Fund is part.

The EPPO said that there were a total of 618 active investigations into alleged fraud cases in Italy at the end of 2023, worth 7.38 billion euros, including 5.22 billion euros from VAT fraud alone.

At the end of 2023, the EPPO had a total of 1,927 investigations open, with an overall estimated damage to the EU budget of 19.2 billion euros.

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