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Italy: Two officers shot dead as robbers escape Trieste police headquarters

Two officers have been killed in a shootout at a police headquarters building in the northern Italian city of Trieste.

Italy: Two officers shot dead as robbers escape Trieste police headquarters
Photo: GIUSEPPE CACACE / AFP

The officers were shot after they apprehended two suspected robbers on Friday and brought them into head office for questioning.

The Italian media is reporting that the two suspects were brothers and had been accused of stealing a scooter. 

It is believed that one of the robbers asked to use the bathroom before stealing a gun from an officer and shooting him. A shootout ensued, in which the two deceased officers – along with three further police and one of the robbers – was injured. 

 

 

The robbers managed to escape, although they were both later apprehended by police. 

The officers have been named as Pierluigi Rotta, 34, and Matteo De Menego, 31. Both were seriously wounded in the shootout, later succumbing to their injuries in hospital. 

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The Mayor of Trieste, Orlando Pocci, told Italian media that the incident was a “tragedy which leaves our community speechless”. 

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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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