22 arrests, Italian villas seized in vast EU fraud swoop
The Peninsula
Brussels, Belgium: A coordinated police swoop across Europe on Thursday netted 22 arrests and saw villas and luxury cars seized in Italy, in a probe i...
Brussels, Belgium: A coordinated police swoop across Europe on Thursday netted 22 arrests and saw villas and luxury cars seized in Italy, in a probe into an alleged 600-million-euro ($650 million) fraud of EU Covid funds, officials said.
Dozens of raids took place in Italy, Austria, Romania and Slovakia as authorities moved in against a suspected criminal network that carried out the alleged fraud between 2021 and 2023, the European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO) said.
The focus of the operation was in Italy, where the Venice office of Italy's financial police unit, the Guardia di Finanza, seized assets worth over 600 million euros on the authority of a pre-trial judge.
The assets include "stately apartments and villas, significant sums in cryptocurrencies, high-end watches (Rolex), jewellery (Cartier), gold, and luxury cars (including Lamborghini Urus, Porsche Panamera and Audi Q8)," the Venice police unit said in a statement.
It said that more than 150 financial police officers conducted raids in cities and towns across the country, "assisted by cash-detection dogs".
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