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Man seized for stealing blood of Pope John Paul II

Italian police in Spoleto said on Friday they had found the presumed thief who stole a church relic containing the blood of the late Pope John Paul II.

Published: 14 November 2020 08:12 CET
Man seized for stealing blood of Pope John Paul II
The relic was stolen from the cathedral in Spoleto in central Italy. Photo: Tiziana Fabi/AFP
The relic of the Polish pope who died in 2005 and was canonised in 2014 was stolen in September from the cathedral in Spoleto, in the centre of Italy.
   
Local police told AFP they filed charges for theft against a 59-year-old man from Tuscany, known to police for having stolen other sacred relics in the past. The man was not arrested.
   
Video surveillance taken inside the church and in city streets helped authorities identify the man.
 
   
The relic remains missing, however, after a search of the man's home revealed no traces of it, police said.
   
The golden cross with a vial of the former pope's blood was given to the Spoleto-Norcia archdiocese in 2016 by the Polish cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, who served for years as John Paul II's personal secretary.
   
The relic was displayed in a niche of the cathedral, protected by an iron gate, whose alarm did not sound after the theft in broad daylight.
   
The alleged thief then headed to the train station where he took two trains to return home.

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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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