Ferrari owner and mobster among Italian benefit cheats
A “citizens’ income” scheme in Italy intended to alleviate poverty was allegedly cheated by thousands of claimants, some of whom owned Ferraris, yachts and several properties, police have said.
Among those claiming the benefit was a presumed mafia boss and a person who invented having children in order to boost their monthly income. The details emerged during a six-month investigation in the southern regions of Campania, Abruzzo, Puglia, Molise and Basilicata.
“There is a bit of everything among those who have unduly received the citizens’ income in southern Italy,” police said. The cost to the state was said to be almost €20m.
The investigation identified more than 5,000 cases of people fraudulently drawing the benefit, of whom 90 had criminal records. Among them was a 70-year-old in the Campania province of Avellino who owned a Ferrari and numerous properties, and a person in Puglia who owned “a large pleasure boat”.
In Isernia, a town in Molise, a female claimant was found to be the owner of a car hire business with a fleet of 27 vehicles, while another person in Avigliano, Basilicata, managed a dance school. A 50-year-man believed to belong to the Cavalese mafia clan operating in Avellino was also tapping into the benefit scheme, police said.
The citizens’ income was the flagship policy of the Five Star Movement (M5S) and was introduced in 2019, when the party was in government with the far-right League. Claimants had to prove their household income was less than the poverty line figure of €780 a month. The amount that could be claimed ranged from up to €780 for single people to €1,300 for a family with two children.
Luigi Di Maio, the M5S former deputy PM and now foreign minister, who spearheaded the scheme, thanked the police for uncovering the alleged fraud and reiterated the scheme’s value. “Like all measures, it has to be tested and fine-tuned,” Di Maio said on Wednesday.
The opposition far-right Brothers of Italy party has called for the scheme to be scrapped. In its first year the initiative cost the government €7.1bn, an expenditure that contributed to clashes with the European Commission over Italy’s budget for 2019 and almost led to the country being sanctioned.