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CRIME

Italian police investigate eight for profiting from government PPE contracts

Italian police are investigating eight people suspected of skimming millions of euros off government contracts for personal protective equipment (PPE).

Published: 17 February 2021 17:27 CET
Italian police investigate eight for profiting from government PPE contracts
Photo: AFP

The contracts, signed by the government's coronavirus crisis commissioner Domenico Arcuri with three Chinese consortiums, were for the supply of more than 800 million face masks for 1.25 billion euros ($1.5 billion).

According to Italy's Guardia di Finanza, the financial police, a group of middlemen pocketed illegal commissions worth “tens of millions of euros”, paid by the Chinese side to make the deals happen.
 
The unnamed suspects are accused of influence peddling, trading in stolen goods and money laundering.
 
Police seized 70 million euros' worth of assets as part of the investigation, including real estate, financial and insurance holdings, company shares, and luxury items including jewellery, cars, motorbikes and a yacht.
 
The commissioner's office “does not appear interested in establishing its own relationship with Chinese suppliers … preferring to rely on improvised freelancers eager to speculate on the epidemic,” prosecutors wrote in the seizure notice, according to Italian media reports.
 
Arcuri's office said it had been the victim of the alleged scam and was considering legal action for compensation.

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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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