ROME: Greater than 40 folks 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 had been exploiting the system for revenue.
Forty-four folks had been apprehended, together with 13 put in jail, 24 beneath home arrest and 7 in custody. They had been charged with varied crimes, similar to felony affiliation geared toward abetting unlawful immigration, cash laundering and false invoicing.
An extra 10 suspects had been banned from enterprise actions for 12 months.
In keeping with an announcement 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 begin the method.
They filed “round 2,500” purposes from 2020 onwards “primarily based on non-existent or falsified information”, prosecutors mentioned, including that migrants paid as a lot as 7,000 euros ($7,575.40) every to push the method alongside by varied bureaucratic hoops.
Belongings price round 6 million euros had been seized as income from the alleged crimes, prosecutors mentioned, indicating that among the suspects accused of cash laundering had been linked to the Camorra, the Mafia in and round Naples.
Chatting with reporters, Salerno Chief Prosecutor Giuseppe Borrelli mentioned investigations had 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 12 months, it raised quotas for work visas for non-EU residents to a complete of 452,000 for the interval 2023-2025, a rise of practically 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 obtainable for 2024 alone, and practically 244,000 requests made within the first 10 days of the opening of the process, in line 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 sometimes advantages undocumented migrants already in Italy, who use the quotas to legalise their state of affairs.
($1 = 0.9240 euros)
Forty-four folks had been apprehended, together with 13 put in jail, 24 beneath home arrest and 7 in custody. They had been charged with varied crimes, similar to felony affiliation geared toward abetting unlawful immigration, cash laundering and false invoicing.
An extra 10 suspects had been banned from enterprise actions for 12 months.
In keeping with an announcement 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 begin the method.
They filed “round 2,500” purposes from 2020 onwards “primarily based on non-existent or falsified information”, prosecutors mentioned, including that migrants paid as a lot as 7,000 euros ($7,575.40) every to push the method alongside by varied bureaucratic hoops.
Belongings price round 6 million euros had been seized as income from the alleged crimes, prosecutors mentioned, indicating that among the suspects accused of cash laundering had been linked to the Camorra, the Mafia in and round Naples.
Chatting with reporters, Salerno Chief Prosecutor Giuseppe Borrelli mentioned investigations had 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 12 months, it raised quotas for work visas for non-EU residents to a complete of 452,000 for the interval 2023-2025, a rise of practically 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 obtainable for 2024 alone, and practically 244,000 requests made within the first 10 days of the opening of the process, in line 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 sometimes advantages undocumented migrants already in Italy, who use the quotas to legalise their state of affairs.
($1 = 0.9240 euros)
