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Italian chef murdered in southern France

French police are investigating the murder of a 30-year-old Italian chef near his home in southern France.

Published: 12 October 2015 11:27 CEST
Italian chef murdered in southern France
Police are investigating the murder of an Italian man in southern France. Photo: Phillipe Hugen/AFP

The body of Fabio Bassoli, originally from Rolo in Emilia Romagna, was found on a wooded footpath 12 kilometers from his home in the town of Aubenas by an early-morning jogger nine days ago.

French authorities did not inform Italian authorities or Bassoli's family until Sunday, Il Resto del Carlino reported

Following the discovery of the body, a postmortem examination carried out in Nîmes revealed that Bassoli had been killed by a violent trauma to the back of the head, which he could not possibly have sustained in a fall.

In spite if questioning Bassoli's close friends and associates in France and watching his home in Aubenas, police are struggling to establish who killed him and why.

Initially it was thought that Bassoli had been killed during a botched robbery attempt, but police are now thought to be leaning towards the idea that he was killed by somebody he knew.

Bassoli moved to France a few years ago and operated a vintage food truck that sold Italian food.

His family is still waiting for his body to be sent home so they can lay him to rest, but for the time being it is still under the French power of attorney.

 

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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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