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CRIME

Four arrested over gang rapes in Italian seaside town

Italian police arrested a man on Sunday suspected of involvement in two rapes last week.

Four arrested over gang rapes in Italian seaside town
Forensic police working at the scene of the attack. Photo: Italian police

The man, a 20-year-old, was the last of the gang of four to be arrested and the only adult among the suspects.

“The last of the suspected Rimini rapists has been located and arrested,” said police in a statement on Monday morning. “The man was captured by police officers on a train to Milan from Pesaro.”

ANALYSIS: 'Violence against women conditions every aspect of our lives'

Rimini police chief Maurizio Improta said the arrest was “doubly satisfying” because the two officers who handcuffed the suspect were female. Improta called this “a symbolic gesture which gave justice to the victims of the violence”.

The below video was shared by police and shows officers escorting the suspect to a police car.

Pesaro is located 40km southeast of Rimini, a popular seaside resort on the Adriatic Coast where the attack took place.

The men allegedly raped a Polish tourist and badly beat up her husband on a Rimini beach, and later raped a transgender woman in a park.

Italy's interior minister Marco Minniti congratulated police for apprehending the suspects so quickly.

Two other members of the gang, who are brothers aged 15 and 17, handed themselves into police in connection with the rapes on Saturday. Their father told the local paper Il Resto del Carlino he had recognized his sons in CCTV images shared by police, and told them to report themselves.

Shortly afterwards, a third suspect aged 16 was detained in a nearby town.

The three minors were previously known to police, but due to their age they are being held in a juvenile detention centre and their names have not been released.

The 20-year-old arrested on Sunday has been identified as a Congolese national who arrived in Italy as an asylum seeker in 2015. Following the rejection of his request for asylum, he was granted permission to stay in Italy until 2018 on humanitarian grounds, according to Italian media reports.

READ ALSO: How can Italy tackle gendered violence?

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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