ROME: Greater than 40 individuals have been held in Italy over migrant visa fraud, police and prosecutors mentioned on Wednesday, weeks after Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni complained that mafia teams have been exploiting the system for revenue.
Forty-four individuals have been apprehended, together with 13 put in jail, 24 below home arrest and 7 in custody. They have been charged with numerous crimes, equivalent to felony affiliation geared toward abetting unlawful immigration, cash laundering and false invoicing.
An extra 10 suspects have been banned from enterprise actions for 12 months.
In response to a press release by prosecutors from the southern metropolis of Salerno, close to Naples, the suspects filed fraudulent visa purposes on behalf of migrants, who want the sponsorship of employers to start out the method.
They filed “round 2,500” purposes from 2020 onwards “primarily based on non-existent or falsified knowledge”, prosecutors mentioned, including that migrants paid as a lot as 7,000 euros ($7,575.40) every to push the method alongside by way of numerous bureaucratic hoops.
Property value round 6 million euros have been seized as income from the alleged crimes, prosecutors mentioned, indicating that a few of the suspects accused of cash laundering have been linked to the Camorra, the Mafia in and round Naples.
Talking to reporters, Salerno Chief Prosecutor Giuseppe Borrelli mentioned investigations have been accelerated after Meloni in June mentioned she had reported her issues about potential visa fraud to the nationwide anti-Mafia prosecutor.
As a part of its powerful stance on immigration, Meloni’s rightist authorities has handed an array of measures to curb migrant arrivals, however has additionally expanded authorized immigration channels in response to rising labour shortages.
Final yr, it raised quotas for work visas for non-EU residents to a complete of 452,000 for the interval 2023-2025, a rise of almost 150% from the earlier three years. In 2019, earlier than the COVID-19 pandemic, Italy issued simply 30,850 visas.
The system is massively oversubscribed, with 151,000 locations accessible for 2024 alone, and almost 244,000 requests made within the first 10 days of the opening of the process, in accordance with the inside ministry.
Final month Meloni mentioned a disproportionate quantity of purposes had come from Campania – the economically depressed area comprising Naples and its Camorra mafia – elevating alarm bells.
Migrant rights advocates say extreme purple tape facilitates visa abuse, and, calling for a reform of the system, say it usually advantages undocumented migrants already in Italy, who use the quotas to legalise their state of affairs.
($1 = 0.9240 euros)
Forty-four individuals have been apprehended, together with 13 put in jail, 24 below home arrest and 7 in custody. They have been charged with numerous crimes, equivalent to felony affiliation geared toward abetting unlawful immigration, cash laundering and false invoicing.
An extra 10 suspects have been banned from enterprise actions for 12 months.
In response to a press release by prosecutors from the southern metropolis of Salerno, close to Naples, the suspects filed fraudulent visa purposes on behalf of migrants, who want the sponsorship of employers to start out the method.
They filed “round 2,500” purposes from 2020 onwards “primarily based on non-existent or falsified knowledge”, prosecutors mentioned, including that migrants paid as a lot as 7,000 euros ($7,575.40) every to push the method alongside by way of numerous bureaucratic hoops.
Property value round 6 million euros have been seized as income from the alleged crimes, prosecutors mentioned, indicating that a few of the suspects accused of cash laundering have been linked to the Camorra, the Mafia in and round Naples.
Talking to reporters, Salerno Chief Prosecutor Giuseppe Borrelli mentioned investigations have been accelerated after Meloni in June mentioned she had reported her issues about potential visa fraud to the nationwide anti-Mafia prosecutor.
As a part of its powerful stance on immigration, Meloni’s rightist authorities has handed an array of measures to curb migrant arrivals, however has additionally expanded authorized immigration channels in response to rising labour shortages.
Final yr, it raised quotas for work visas for non-EU residents to a complete of 452,000 for the interval 2023-2025, a rise of almost 150% from the earlier three years. In 2019, earlier than the COVID-19 pandemic, Italy issued simply 30,850 visas.
The system is massively oversubscribed, with 151,000 locations accessible for 2024 alone, and almost 244,000 requests made within the first 10 days of the opening of the process, in accordance with the inside ministry.
Final month Meloni mentioned a disproportionate quantity of purposes had come from Campania – the economically depressed area comprising Naples and its Camorra mafia – elevating alarm bells.
Migrant rights advocates say extreme purple tape facilitates visa abuse, and, calling for a reform of the system, say it usually advantages undocumented migrants already in Italy, who use the quotas to legalise their state of affairs.
($1 = 0.9240 euros)
