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CRIME

‘Peeing in street not a crime if urgent’: court

A 55-year-old civil servant has been acquitted for urinating in a street in Lamon, in the northern province of Belluno, after Italy's highest court deemed the act to be “urgent”.

Published: 11 November 2013 12:23 CET
'Peeing in street not a crime if urgent': court
Urinating in public in Italy is against the law. Photo: PadKirtsch/Flickr

The man also had a €200 fine for public indecency scrapped after his lawyer, Fabio Giuggioli, argued in the Supreme Court that his client found himself in "desperate circumstances" when he was caught urinating in a narrow street close to a square in Lamon, Il Gazzetino reported.

The man, named only by his initials, A.T., told the court: “I’m sorry, but I was forced to use this road as a toilet. Attempts to use the services in a nearby restaurant failed.”

Giuggioli added that his client had suffered greatly since the incident in January 2009 and “no longer has a clean record”.

Anyone caught urinating in public in Italy risks a month in prison and being fined up to €210, unless, of course, it’s urgent.

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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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