Italy, the first EU beneficiary country of the pandemic recovery plan, launched an operation this Thursday against a large-scale case of corruption in the use of these funds. The Italian authorities, in a coup led by the European Public Prosecutor's Office, have arrested 22 people accused of having defrauded up to 600 million euros from this community effort to overcome the economic crisis derived from the pandemic.
Most of the arrests have been carried out in Italy but there have also been arrests in Austria, Slovakia and Romania. Italian police have also confiscated assets such as stately apartments and villas, significant sums in cryptocurrencies, and other luxury products such as Rolex watches, Cartier jewelry, and Lamborghini or Porsche cars. Eight of the suspects have been placed in preventive detention while the other 14 are under house arrest.
According to investigators, this is a criminal group that, with the help of front men and four businessmen, between 2021 and 2023 began to request non-refundable subsidies to increase the digitalization and competitiveness of small and medium-sized businesses and expand their operations. activities to foreign markets. Later, they would have falsified their accounts to show that they were profitable and operating companies – when they were fictitious – and sent the funds to bank accounts in Romania, Austria and Slovakia with a “complex and articulated” network of false companies.
According to investigators, they used “advanced technologies, such as VPNs, cloud servers located abroad, cryptoassets and artificial intelligence software,” in order to “carry out fraudulent behavior and hide and protect the illegal business.”
The Italian police add that, later, the same organization was dedicated to generating non-existent credits for the construction sector, attracting subsidies for the renovation of facades in Italy. The European Public Prosecutor's Office believes that a network of public accountants and notaries could be involved in the plot who would have helped this criminal organization to obtain the 600 million European funds of non-refundable funds in just two years. An accountant, in fact, has been prohibited from carrying out his professional activity.
Italy is the country that will receive the most funds from the Recovery Fund, with up to 191,500 million euros until 2026, of which 69,000 million will be transferred as subsidies and 122,600 million will arrive as credits to be returned, to which another 30,000 million will be added. euros in national resources. The authorities in the country are focused on demonstrating zero tolerance against fraud in these resources due to the fear that cases like this will revive criticism about the irregular use of European funds by less convinced partners, such as the Netherlands.
