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CRIME

Murderer flees jail using rope of knotted sheets

Police have launched a manhunt after an inmate serving life for murder broke out of prison in Palermo, Sicily, on Wednesday using a rope of knotted sheets.

Published: 7 May 2014 17:20 CEST
Murderer flees jail using rope of knotted sheets
The prisoner escaped from a jail in Palermo using knotted sheets. Photo: Portogaround/Flickr

The 36-year-old Albanian man broke the bars of his cell at Pagliarelli prison and climbed down the wall on the rope of knotted sheets, Il Fatto Quotidiano reported.

The man, said to have a criminal history of murder, burglary and extortion, also managed to escape from prison in Parma in February last year, and was found shortly after, according to a report on Rai News.

He was transferred to the Palermo prison in March this year.

In February, two men in jail for robbery also adopted the sheets tactic, and managed to escape from prison in Rome.

READ MORE HERE: Robbers break out of jail using knotted sheets

In December, two killers escaped after being granted day release.

One of them was serial killer Bartolomeo Gagliano, who is now back in prison in Genoa after being caught in southern France a few days after his escape.

READ MORE HERE: Escaped serial killer sent back to Italy

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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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