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Cantone 'amazed' at new migrant-money fraud

Cantone 'amazed' at new migrant-money fraud

NGO chief arrested, priest under investigation

Naples, 25 May 2015, 18:59

ANSA Editorial

ANSACheck

- ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

-     ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
- ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Raffaele Cantone, the head of Italy's anti-corruption authority, said Monday that he was "astonished" after Naples prosecutors said at the weekend that they were probing alleged fraud by officials working for NGOs dealing with the migrant emergency.
    It was the latest in a string of cases of graft where NGOs or collectives, usually leftwing, were found to have illicitly profited from the migrant-reception business.
    Asking for the probe files to see if a commissioner was needed and to review migrant procedures across Campania, Cantone called on civil society and the professional world "to not entrench itself behind a corporate mentality".
    "There needs to be a united effort of all parts of civil society, which, too often in the best case scenario, have simply looked on, and in some cases have been complicit in illicit activity," Cantone said.
    "If civil society doesn't do its part, it's hard to think that we can do it," he said.
    Cantone's comments follow the Saturday arrest of Alfonso De Martino, president of the non-profit Un'Ala di Riserva, accused of stealing more than one million euros intended for migrant aid and investing the money in property and phone cards.
    De Martino's partner Rosa Carnevale was placed on house arrest, and two people associated with Catholic aid organization Caritas in Teggiano Policastro, including Father Vincenzo Federico, are under investigation for graft.
    Caritas in Teggiano Policastro, located in the province of Salerno, manages four immigrant reception centers and investigators said it's "likely" they are tied into the scandal that brought the Saturday arrests.
    Father Federico told ANSA Monday he trusts in the judiciary.
    "I have always been committed to trying to alleviate these people's suffering," said Father Federico, who directs a Caritas branch in Teggiano.
    "I won't comment on the investigation but I trust in the judiciary," said the priest, who also heads the Caritas Campania chapter.
    The president of the NGO, De Martino, will be questioned in front of the preliminary investigations judge Tuesday.
    Monday's case is the latest in a stream of graft scandals where corrupt businessmen and voluntary workers, mainly from leftwing cooperatives, have been found to be making a killing from funds attached to the migrant-management business.
    Perhaps the biggest scam was revealed in the case of a new Roman mafia, dubbed Capital Mafia, some of whose top members were heard on a wiretap saying "there's more money in migrants and gypsies (Roma) than there is in drugs".
    Cantone meanwhile called the government's new anti-corruption legislation "the best that could be done".
    He said the fight against corruption is "betting on young people's future" and "an instrument for blocking a system that creates problems above all for deserving people".
    In a lesson for students at Naples' Federico II University, Cantone discussed the anti-graft law approved by the government last week.
    "It's a good law, the best that could have been done in this moment," without creating division between political factions, he said.
    He praised elements of the law, including the reintroduction of false accounting as a crime, reduced sentences for collaborators of justice, and a modification that makes bribery in public service a crime and strengthens related penalties.
    Cantone also touched on the problem of how to manage assets seized in the fight against organized crime.
    "Intelligent work in asset management is indispensable; these assets can't be an extra burden on State finances and above all must be an opportunity for economic development," Cantone said.
    Cantone said there's a need for a "new logic, a sort of economic start-up and not initiatives that are often just unrealistic".
   

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