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Four charged with UK murder of Italian teen

Four Lithuanian men have been charged with the murder of a 19-year-old Italian man killed at the weekend in Kent, south-east of London.

Published: 23 October 2013 19:13 CEST
Four charged with UK murder of Italian teen
Joele Leotta was killed in his apartment in Kent, England, on Sunday night. Photo: Facebook

Joele Leotta was beaten to death on Sunday evening in the city of Maidstone, where he had moved just a week earlier to work and improve his English.

Aleksandras Zuravliovas, 26, Tomas Gelezinis, 30, and 23-year-old Saulius Tamoliunas all live locally and have been charged with Leotta's murder. A fourth Lithuanian charged, 21-year-old Linas Zidonis, was described by British police as having "no fixed abode".

A total of 10 people have been arrested in connection with the murder, a police statement released on Wednesday evening said.

Leotta, from Nibionno in Lombardy, had just started working at the Italian restaurant Vesuvius when he was killed in an apartment above the restaurant on Sunday night, local news site Kent Online reported.

Police refused to disclose any motivation for the murder. The foreign nationality of the men charged contradicts earlier reports in Italian media said Leotta’s attackers accused him of “stealing English jobs” and suggested the murder was motivated by xenophobia. 

“Joele was so happy having this experience [in England]. We are so bewildered we can’t even think,” his father Ivan Leotta told ANSA news agency.

“My son was not someone who liked to quarrel and in any case he had just arrived and hadn’t had time to come into conflict with anyone,” he added. 

The four Lithuanians will appear in court by video link on Thursday, police said.

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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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