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Italy vows full support in heiress murder case

Italy is ready to offer France "maximum collaboration" on solving the disappearance of an heiress in 1977, an Italian prosecutor said Thursday as the murder trial against her lover reached a climax.

Published: 11 April 2014 07:30 CEST
Italy vows full support in heiress murder case

"We would offer the maximum collaboration" and launch a full-blown probe should French judicial authorities request Italy's help in cracking the
36-year-old mystery, prosecutor Mario Mercone said.

Italian police searched through archives of murdered women as Maurice Agnelet prepared for a verdict in his trial for allegedly killing his wealthy
mistress Agnes Le Roux in Cassino near Rome nearly four decades ago.

"We are looking back through our archives for anything linked to the case," a police official in Cassino said.

Local media said the police were looking through lists of unidentified women found dead in the area but all the ones found so far have since been
named.

The town is best known for its mediaeval abbey of Monte Cassino on a forested hill overlooking the town and the area was the site of a famous World War II battle.

Agnelet was this week accused by his son of shooting Le Roux, 29, in the head during a camping trip to Cassino, before dumping her naked body.

Le Roux's body was never found and Agnelet, 76, is undergoing his third trial for her murder, which is expected to reach a verdict on Friday.

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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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