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Fifteen Italian prison officers probed for alleged torture

Fifteen prison officers in Italy are under investigation for allegedly torturing a Tunisian prisoner, Italian media said on Sunday.

Published: 23 September 2019 09:17 CEST
Fifteen Italian prison officers probed for alleged torture
A guard in a prison in Sicily. File photo: Andreas Solaro/AFP

Prosecutors in Siena accuse the 15 of beating and humiliating a prisoner in the San Gimignano jail last year, the Repubblica daily said. Four of the officers were suspended last week after a months-long probe.

The case against them reportedly draws on surveillance footage and witness statements from other prisoners.

READ ALSO: The Netflix film shocking Italians with a true tale of suspected police brutality

Prison rights group Antigone said it was the first such case to be brought by prosecutors since torture was criminalised in 2017.

“Those who have seen abuse and violence must knock down the wall of silence” protecting perpetrators, the group's head Patrizio Gonnella said.

Unions warned in July that the situation at the San Gimignano jail was “explosive”, the Corriere della Sera daily said.

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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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