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Image of the Italian financial brigade showing the tracking of suspects during an anti-mafia operation in Sicily. Handout / Guardia di Finanza press office / AFP

The Italian police dismantled this Wednesday, January 15 in Sicily a mafia network specializing in fraud to European agricultural subsidies. Nearly a hundred people were arrested, including mafia leaders, state employees and local notables.

The operation of the anti-mafia forces required the deployment of 600 police officers. It is the largest ever conducted in the province of Messina, Sicily. Two historic clans of Tortorici, a town in the Nebrodi Mountains Park, were beheaded, 94 people were arrested and 150 farms were placed in receivership. Among those arrested, 48 were incarcerated and the rest placed under house arrest, police said.

The bosses acted with the complicity of notaries, entrepreneurs, trade unionists, civil servants and other white-collar workers, to obtain European funds intended for the farmers. They managed to divert 10 million euros in subsidies, by fraudulently claiming ownership of land which, for the most part, actually belonged to the region, but was not controlled.

In his indictment, judge Sergio Mastroeni considers that the scam rested on " the unconditional support " of employees having " the know-how necessary to send the Mafia to the nerve center of the public funding system " and to exploit the loopholes of lax control.

The European Commission " supports the development of this investigation ", reacted at midday one of its spokesmen, Daniel Rosario. " This is something that the Commission takes very seriously", he stressed, adding that Brussels was pursuing "a policy of zero tolerance " in this area. " It is first of all up to the Member States to ensure that solid measures are in place to manage these (European) funds and to take the necessary measures if there is any suspicion, " he recalled. Italian Interior Minister Luciana Lamorgese expressed her “ very great satisfaction ” following this operation.

The national anti-mafia prosecutor Federico Cafiero de Raho noted " a qualitative leap in the mafia (...) which enters the legal economy with illegal systems " and now acts " not only in the field of traditional crime, such as drug trafficking or extortion, but also in that of community fraud ”.

(With AFP)