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CRIME

Crime ‘has cost Italy’s economy €16bn’

Crime is putting investors off Italy, costing the economy an estimated €16 billion in foreign investment over the past eight years, the governor of the Bank of Italy said on Friday.

Published: 7 November 2014 17:03 CET
Crime 'has cost Italy's economy €16bn'
Ignazio Visco, the governor of the Bank of Italy, said crime is putting off investors. Photo: Toru Yamanaka/AFP

Ignazio Visco told a conference in Milan that crime “has a negative effect on investments in general, especially from abroad,” Il Sole 24 reported.

He called on the government to rapidly adopt a new anti-money laundering law as well as create conditions that will prompt a return to growth.

"Respect for the law in the financial sector is a prerequisite for a sound and prudent management of financial institutions,” Visco said.

Italy was listed as one of the most corrupt countries in Europe in Transparency Interantional Corruption Perception Index for 2013, published last December.

The eurozone’s third-largest economy came 69th in the list of 177 countries.

READ MORE HERE: Italy among most corrupt countries in Europe

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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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