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CRIME

Pensioner kills pump attendant in price row

A pensioner in Sicily has confessed shooting dead a petrol pump attendant. His motive? The fuel was too expensive.

Published: 23 June 2015 10:22 CEST
Pensioner kills pump attendant in price row
The killer was identified thanks to CCTV footage from the area. Police car photo: Shutterstock

Mario Di Fiore, 63, shot Nicola Lombardo, 44, in the back on Saturday at around 3pm at a petrol station in Palermo. The bullet hit Lombrado in the spleen and he later died from his injuries following a six-hour operation.

Di Fiore was arrested on Saturday night after his licence plate was identified on CCTV. He was taken in for questioning and later confessed to shooting Lombardo with a gun that he had obtained illegally.

As a motive Di Fiore explained that they had argued over the price of fuel, Giornale di Sicilia reported.

The pensioner's shock confession brings a bizarre ending to bloody killing which had initially confused the police who suspected it had been a mafia hit.

At first investigations had focused on private life of the victim, who had worked for a short time at the petrol station, which belongs to the brother of a man killed by the mafia.

 

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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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