Italian crime group linked to laundered EU agricultural funds
Italian police and the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) have uncovered an elaborate fraud scheme run by a crinimal group with links to the mafia.
The scheme spanned across seven different EU countries,
including Ireland, with the group having committed fraud against EU rural
development funds worth some €9.5m.
It involved the purchase of machinery with the support of EU
funds at an inflated price. The machinery was declared as new, when it was in
fact secondhand or purchased at a much lower price than officially declared.
Fictitious companies were set up outside Italy to cover the
traces of fraud and facilitate the money laundering.
Both the buying and the selling companies had ties to the
fraudsters according to OLAF, with the fictitious sales of food products used
to launder the illicit profits back to those who initiated the scheme. This
closed the circle on a “highly sophisticated fraud”.
Special Carabinieri units conducted an operation in the
southern Italian region of Puglia against the criminal group involved called
Società Foggiana. In total, 48 people were arrested under operation ‘Grande
Carro’, Italian for ‘Big Dipper’.
Charges against those arrested included the offence of
mafia-type criminal association, money laundering, extortion, intimidation,
kidnapping, illegal detention of firearms and explosives and fraud.
Access to bank account statements analysis of movements of
cash valued at more than €17m allowed OLAF to reconstruct the money transfers
made outside of Italy. This proved crucial in confirming the money-laundering scheme,
it said.
On-the-spot checks on the machinery were also performed.
Filippo Spiezia, vice president of Eurojust, the EU Agency
for Criminal Justice Cooperation said: “The investigation in this case confirms
the seriousness of the threat to the abuse of EU funds, posed by organised
crime.
“This shows the need to work together to combat this kind of
crime by all EU institutions and we stand ready to support OLAF and the
European Public Prosecutor’s Office now and in the future.”
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