Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

CRIME

Italian couple arrested for sending weapons to Isis

Italian police on Tuesday arrested a married couple on suspicion of sending weapons to a faction of terrorist group Isis.

Published: 1 February 2017 11:45 CET
Italian couple arrested for sending weapons to Isis
Police officers escort the couple into a police car. Photo: Carlo Hermann/AFP

Police believe the pair sent weapons including assault rifles, surface-to-air missiles and even helicopters to Iran and Libya between 2011 and 2015, despite an embargo. The couple in their 60's have been named as Annamaria Fontana and Mario Di Leva – known as Jafaar since their conversion to Islam, according to local paper Napoli Today.

Their son and the CEO of the Italian Helicopters Society were also reportedly arrested in connection with the weapons trafficking.

Fontana was well-known locally as a politician, having served two terms as a socialist councillor in San Giorgio a Cremano, Campania, in the 80's and 90's. 

In recent years she had moved away from politics and begun to visit the Middle East regularly with her husband, Il Corriere del Mezzogiorno reported, building up close ties with the Libyan government and meeting Iran's former premier.

The arrests were made following a nationwide operation coordinated by Italy's anti-mafia police department in Naple. Police had launched the investigation in 2011, following leads from an investigation into the Camorra mafia clan.

 

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.

SHOW COMMENTS