Police on the Italian island of Sicily have arrested 37 people, some of them alleged mafia members, as part of an investigation into a large-scale fraud involving EU agricultural subsidies.
After a previous investigation, 91 individuals were convicted in November 2022 for fraudulently receiving more than €5m (£4.3m) in subsidies between 2010 and 2017. The subsidies included funds for thousands of hectares of “ghost” farmland in the eastern part of Sicily, which either did not exist, had been stolen from farmers, or was owned by the Italian state or regional government.
Investigators involved in the original investigation said mafia clans had obtained the funds thanks to the help of “white-collar workers” who had enabled members to negotiate the bureaucratic world of EU funding. Participants also allegedly staged hundreds of fraudulent operations against Agea, the Italian agency that issues agricultural funding.
The latest investigation was launched last year and relied on the testimonies of three collaborators who were part of the Batanesi mafia group, one of the oldest crime families on the island. The fraud allegedly involved more than 150 companies. The charges include criminal association, extortion, fraudulent transfer of assets, fraud against the state, money laundering and self-laundering, and attempted private violence.
Members of the Batanesi, Bontempo Scavo and Tortorici clans were among the people arrested in Messina.
The Batanesi and Bontempo Scavo had been in conflict with each other for years but recently ended their turf wars and team up in their criminal activities.
Annual EU agricultural subsidies of up to €1,000 a hectare provide an incentive to organised crime.
In the original investigation file, a magistrate wrote that it was often the case that one phone call from an organised crime boss was enough to prompt a farmer to give up his land. “The boss just needed to call over the phone a farmer to steal his land. Often, feared by the mere name of the mobster, the farmer gave up his land without even trying to rebel, for fear of retaliation,” the file said.
Farmers who refused to be involved with the fraud faced having their land spoiled, their livestock killed and their homes set on fire.
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Intercepting EU agricultural funding has become a growing business for the Sicilian mafia in recent years. Weakened under judicial pressure and with drug trafficking now run by the most powerful Calabrian mafia, the ’Ndrangheta, Sicily’s declining Cosa Nostra syndicate, has been pushed back to its rural origins.
