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Family of shot teen publishes photo of body

The family of Davide Bifolco, a 17-year-old shot dead by police in Naples last Thursday during a police chase, has published a photo of the teenager's dead body on Facebook in a bid to prove that he was intentionally killed by police.

Published: 8 September 2014 11:00 CEST

In the photo, which was posted on Sunday by Bifolco's sister on her Facebook page and published widely in the Italian media, a wound is clearly seen on Bifolco’s chest above his heart, which the victim's family say was the fatal bullet wound fired by police. 

Bifolco’s family claim that the boy was intentionally killed and their lawyers are currently working to reconstruct the events that led to the shooting, Ansa reported.

The family also says it has "two other witnesses" unknown to them who "were present at the time of the shooting" and has released CCTV footage from outside an arcade after the shooting which it says contradicts the police's version of events.  

Police, meanwhile, maintain that Bifolco was killed accidentally when they were trying to arrest two or three teenagers. One of the three had broken house arrest.

Bifolco was shot dead while on his scooter on Thursday evening in Rione Traiano, Naples. On Friday, the victim’s sibling Tommaso Bifolco said that his brother did not have a licence, was not insured and that the scooter did not belong to him.

“Maybe he got scared, maybe he wanted to avoid the scooter being taken and that’s why he didn’t stop for the police,” Bifolco said, according to Ansa.

An autopsy was scheduled to be carried out on Monday but this has now been postponed until Tuesday at the family's request so that further tests can be carried out. 

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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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