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CRIME

Syrian scholar’s murder ‘a horror’

Italy’s Culture Minister, Dario Franceschini, has expressed his 'horror' over the brutal murder of a Syrian antiquities scholar in Palmyra by the Isis militant group.

Syrian scholar's murder 'a horror'
A general view taken on May 18th shows the castle of the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra. Photo: STR/AFP

Isis beheaded Khaled Al-Asaad in a public square in Palmyra in front of dozens of onlookers, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said on its website on Tuesday.

The 82-year-old expert was the former director of the city’s world-famous archaeological site and his body was hung from a pillar after he was decapitated.

“The beheading of Khaled Al-Asaad is a gesture that provokes horror,” Franceschini said in a statement released on Wednesday.

“The barbaric violence towards a man who dedicated his life to the cultural heritage of his own country is the very rejection of civilization.”

“This horrible act cannot pass without a response. The Declaration of Milan endorsed at Expo by nearly 90 countries is the first step, now we need a major commitment from the international community to defend culture and people in areas of crisis.”

The news of the archaeologist’s death was initially given by Syrian Antiquities and Museums Director, Maamoun Abdulkarim, to Syria’s state-run news agency, Sana.

Al-Asaad is reported to have been arrested a month ago and interrogated by members of Isis seeking information on where Roman artefacts may have been hidden before Isis occupied the ancient city in May. 

He had been director of the Palmyra archaeological site for 40 years until his retirement in 2003. Sana reports that he had continued to work as an expert after his retirement for the Antiquities and Museums Department.

He had also worked with US, French, German and Swiss archaeological missions on excavations and research in Palmyra’s 2,000-year-old ruins, which is a Unesco World Heritage site that includes Roman tombs and the Temple. 

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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