Some EU funds set up to rebuild the medieval Italian town of L'Aquila after the 2009 earthquake were diverted to companies with links to the Mafia, EU investigators concluded in their inquiry into reconstruction efforts after the magnitude 6.3 quake.
The EU rapporteur, Soren Bo Sondergaard, said in the report that
there was evidence that some of the 494,000-euro donation was
paid to construction companies with "direct or indirect ties
to organized crime." Apart from cases of fraud, wanted
criminals were discovered at a factory run by one of the
contractors.
Fears that taxpayers’ money could end up in deep mafia pockets
have been circulating for a long time, and eventually appear to
have been realized. The EU had made several hundred million euro
available for the region from its Solidarity Fund, while the
direct damage caused by the earthquake has been estimated at over
10 billion euro.
The earthquake which hit the medieval mountain town on April 6,
2009, killed over 300 people and left tens of thousands homeless.
Investigators have also slammed the quality of the
newly-constructed accommodation, with unhealthy and shoddily
constructed homes dangerous to live in, meanwhile some of them
are said to be overpriced by more than two-and-a-half times. The
authors of the report reproved the Italian authorities and the
European Union Commission in Brussels for negligence to ensure
that EU taxpayers' money was well spent.
The entire town, built in the 13th century and mirroring the city
plan of Jerusalem, became uninhabitable. L'Aquila is still more
like a ghost town. Fifty-five neighboring municipalities were
also affected by the earthquake; some were completely destroyed.
Authorities said poor building standards were to blame for the
death toll.
In 2010 and 2011, the Prosecutor of Aquila opened several
enquiries into the misuse of the funds for emergency and
reconstruction by criminal organizations. Back then the
prosecutor national substitute of the National Anti-Mafia
Department, Olga Capasso, noted that among the problems related
to combating organized crime, "Aquila is one of the biggest
problems at a national level."