European Union fraud to pocket millions of euros in public funds for nonexistent pastures. At dawn, the major operation "Transumanza" began, conducted from north to south by the Pescara Financial Police, directed and coordinated by the District Anti-Mafia Directorate (DDA) of the L'Aquila Prosecutor's Office.
There are 75 individuals and entities involved, with 25 personal precautionary measures, 16 preventive searches and seizures in execution, also thanks to the air assets of the Pescara Naval Air Operations Department, throughout Italy, between Abruzzo, Puglia, Trentino Alto Adige, Piedmont, Lombardy, Veneto, Liguria, Emilia Romagna, Lazio and Campania, for an illicit business in which the hand of the "Foggia mafia" is also suspected, given the involvement of affiliates of the criminal organizations of Gargano.
The investigations, carried out in collaboration with the Organized Crime Investigation Group of the PEF Nucleus of L'Aquila and the Special Nucleus for Public Spending and Repression of Community Fraud, lasted 2 years. The financial police carried out document acquisitions, interceptions of over 100 thousand conversations, 8.000 queries to databases and bank checks on more than 270 current accounts.
The investigative team thus outlined the existence of a criminal association dedicated to the perpetration, with mafia-related aggravating circumstances, of fraud to the detriment of the national and community budget, which would have been implemented through undue requests for contributions for the European Agricultural Guarantee Fund (F.
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In order to defraud Brussels, the criminal association, which has been operating since 2014 and which is said to include 13 people, allegedly simulated possession of the necessary requirements to obtain the availability of land and corresponding CAP titles, issued free of charge by the National Reserve of Titles to new young agricultural entrepreneurs.
According to investigators, the new fictitious agricultural enterprises were in cahoots with other agricultural cooperatives or temporary associations of enterprises, formed to buy up thousands of hectares of land whose concession for civic use was put out to tender by the Municipalities.
The frauds, ascertained by the financial police, would amount to approximately 5 million euros. Amounts seized from 24 agricultural companies and 38 individuals, accused, to varying degrees, of self-laundering, reinvestment of illicit proceeds, receiving stolen goods, aggravated fraud against the State and for obtaining public funds.
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