The Guardia di Finanza of Treviso reported 101 people who had been hired in schools in the province by presenting false cultural and service qualifications. The hirings, on a fixed-term basis, had been made between 2018 and 2020 and concerned ATA school staff (administrative, technical, auxiliary).
The estimated damage to the treasury amounts to two million euros. The hirings were made based on the position held by the candidates in the ranking related to the ATA personnel announcement, published by decree of the Minister of Education, for the three-year school period 2017/2020. The ranking, formed based on the scores attributed to the educational and service qualifications declared by the candidates, aimed to be an expression of the intellectual qualities and professional skills of the aspirants.
In fact, the top positions in the rankings were systematically occupied by candidates who certified that they had obtained professional qualification diplomas with a score of 100 hundredths, in addition to having specific professional experience. For most of these, however, it emerged during the investigations that the diploma had been obtained, with the maximum score, at a limited number of schools in Campania, while the service qualifications had been acquired by working in unlikely private schools.
The presence of such anomalies has induced the financial police of the Economic-Financial Police Unit of TREVISO to carry out, also thanks to the collaboration provided by the Provincial School Office, in-depth investigations into the scholastic and work "career" of various individuals, ascertaining, in numerous cases, serious irregularities.
In particular, for 43 of the people hired, the diplomas were issued by four schools, located in the provinces of Salerno, Benevento and Avellino, which were not authorised by the Regional School Office to conduct professional qualification exams. These schools, already at the centre of judicial investigations because they were suspected of being real "diploma factories", issued diplomas despite not having the requirement of school parity.
There are also several cases of completely fake diplomas. For some of these, issued by a private institute based in Naples, a circumstance has increased the investigators' suspicions: the school, in 2016, reported the theft of the appointment documents of teachers and exam commissions, exam reports and written papers of several candidates, all kept inside a school bus.
And, strange coincidence, the theft occurred on the same day that the Campania Regional School Office sent its own personnel to carry out an inspection of the institute's activities. Seven candidates, instead, declared that they had obtained their diploma at a private school in Caserta where, in the course of a single school year, approximately 700 students had graduated, despite the fact that only ten diplomas had been requested from the Ministry of Education and that the structure, from a logistical point of view, was capable of educating no more than a few dozen students.
Eight other candidates declared that they obtained their diploma from a private institute in the province of Salerno. However, there is no trace of their name in the list of graduates for whom the private institute requested the Ministry to issue the parchment.
And again: the progressive identification number of three diplomas, issued to as many candidates by a private institute in the same province of Salerno, was found to be already associated with the diplomas of as many students, attending a state institute in the same region. Finally, there are 40 candidates who declared the possession of false service titles, certifying that they had carried out work activities at other private schools in Campania, Puglia, Calabria and Sicily.
The investigations instead allowed to ascertain that these had never received compensation for the service activity that they had allegedly provided, while the private schools, often conniving, had failed to communicate the start of the employment relationship and, consequently, to pay the related social security contributions. To understand how, in some cases, the candidates presented grossly false self-certifications, it is enough to consider that the telephone numbers of a school, where three candidates declared to have carried out dependent work, corresponded to those of a jewelry store in Vibo Valentia.
It was precisely the diplomas obtained with top marks and the service certificates that allowed these candidates to illegally leapfrog, in the general ranking, those who had declared qualifications actually obtained. The investigation concluded with the reporting to the Public Prosecutor's Office of TREVISO of 101 people for ideological falsehood committed by the private individual in a public document, a crime punishable by imprisonment of up to two years, and with the reporting to the Court of Auditors of Venice of a financial loss of approximately 2 million euros, equal to the salaries received by the individuals hired, to the detriment of other candidates, thanks to the false qualifications.
The Court of Auditors will now be able to call them to return the sums received, in addition to contesting the damage caused by poor service and the damage to the image of the Public Administration. The heads of school offices, in dozens of cases, have already adopted, against school collaborators, administrative assistants and technicians without qualifications, measures to terminate the employment contract.
The operation of the Guardia di Finanza of TREVISO demonstrates, once again, the commitment aimed at identifying and prosecuting all those responsible for conduct that causes damage to the proper functioning, efficiency, effectiveness and integrity of the budget of the Public Administration.
Article published on 22 October 2021 - 14:04
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