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Russian tourist drowns nine-month-old baby

A Russian tourist has admitted to drowning her nine-month-old son while on holiday in Liguria, north-west Italy, saying that she feared he had schizophrenia.

Published: 12 December 2014 10:26 CET
Russian tourist drowns nine-month-old baby
The woman admitted to driving around 20 kilometres along the coast to Bussana where she said she drowned the child. Photo: Davide Papalini/Wikicommons

The 40-year-old from Moscow, who was on holiday in the town of Bordighera with a friend, was arrested on Thursday for murdering her baby son, Corriere della Sera reported.

The alarm was raised by the woman’s friend who reported the child’s disappearance on Thursday morning.

CCTV footage from the hotel shows the woman leaving the hotel at around 2.00am in the early hours of Thursday morning. She was then seen returning to the hotel two hours later without the child.

The woman admitted to driving around 20 kilometres along the coast to Bussana, but first told investigators that she left the child on the rocks. She then admitted to throwing the baby into the sea.

Later on Thursday she reportedly changed her story, saying that she took the baby with her into the sea in a sling and drowned it. The woman said that she feared that her son suffered from schizophrenia like her mother.

The body of the child has not yet been recovered and police scuba divers are still searching for the child. French authorities have also been notified due to the strong currents.

The woman has been taken to a prison in the coastal city of Imperia. 

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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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