Europe police arrest 22 people over suspected €600 million EU Covid fund fraud

Dozens of raids were conducted with arrests in Italy, Austria, Romania and Slovakia as a result of an investigation into an alleged criminal network

Of the 22 arrested, eight were put in detention pending trial and the other 14 were under house arrest, with one, an accountant, banned from practising

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A gondolier propels a gondola along a patch of phosphorescent green liquid seen on the Grand Canal near the Rialto Bridge in Venice. Dozens of raids were conducted with arrests in Italy, Austria, Romania and Slovakia as a result of an investigation into an alleged criminal network. Photo: EPA-EFE

Published: 8:22pm, 4 Apr 2024

Authorities arrested 22 people across four European countries on Thursday as part of a probe into a suspected €600 million (US$650 million) fraud of Covid recovery money, the bloc’s prosecutor’s office said.

Dozens of raids were conducted with arrests in Italy, Austria, Romania and Slovakia as a result of an investigation into an alleged criminal network thought to have scooped up the funds, the European Public Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement.

The criminal organisation is “suspected of defrauding €600 million from the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) for Italy”, the Luxembourg-based EPPO said.

It added that the Venice office of Italy’s financial police unit, the Guardia di Finanza, froze assets worth over €600 million on the authority of a pre-trial judge.

Of the 22 arrested suspects, eight were put in detention pending trial and the other 14 were under house arrest, with one, an accountant, banned from practising.

The EPPO said it had been focusing on an alleged criminal network that, between 2021 and 2023, set up a fraud scheme to obtain money from Italy’s share of the RRF.

The RRF, established to help the bloc’s countries bounce back from the economic blow dealt by the Covid pandemic, was worth more than €720 billion, financed in large part through common EU borrowing.