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Nun killer suspect: convent was on my land

The man arrested for raping and murdering three elderly Italian nuns in a convent in Burundi has reportedly confessed to the crime, claiming that the convent was on land that belonged to his family, local police said on Tuesday.

Nun killer suspect: convent was on my land
Photos (from left to right) show Olga Raschietti, Bernadette Boggia and Lucia Pulici: Missionaire di Maria/AFP

The 33-year-old, who has not been named, on Tuesday confessed to local police that he had raped and murdered three Roman Catholic nuns at a convent in Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi.

“I raped them then I killed them,” he reportedly told police, according to Tgcom24, because “they are foreigners who are occupying my property.”

The man was found with a key to the convent and a mobile telephone belonging to one of the nuns, according to police sources.

Police said Lucia Pullici, 75, and Olga Raschietti, 83, were stabbed to death on Sunday afternoon, with the killer then battering one of the two with a rock.

Hours later, before dawn on Monday, another nun, Bernardetta Boggian, aged 79, was killed in the same convent, her body beaten and her head hacked off.

It is still not clear how the killer managed to enter the convent and kill the third nun without being stopped by the police at the scene.

Initial reports said the man who carried out the first attack, killing two nuns on Sunday afternoon, fled the scene.

According to Tgcom24, the alleged killer spent a large part of his life in Congo and returned to Burundi eight years ago.

Pope Francis on Monday issued his condolences."The Holy Father begs the Lord to welcome into his kingdom of peace and light these three faithful and devout nuns," he said in a statement.

Burundian Vice-President Prosper Bazombanza has said the government was "appalled by such barbarity".

In 2011, a Croatian nun and an Italian charity worker were killed in an apparent botched robbery in northern Burundi.

The small nation in Africa's Great Lakes region emerged in 2006 from 13 years of brutal civil war and its political climate remains fractious ahead of presidential polls due in June 2015. 

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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.

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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