ROME: More than 40 people have been held in Italy over migrant visa fraud, police and prosecutors said on Wednesday, weeks after Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni complained that mafia groups were exploiting the system for profit.
Forty-four people were apprehended, including 13 put in jail, 24 under house arrest and seven in custody. They were charged with various crimes, such as criminal association aimed at abetting illegal immigration, money laundering and false invoicing.
A further 10 suspects were banned from business activities for 12 months.
According to a statement by prosecutors from the southern city of Salerno, near Naples, the suspects filed fraudulent visa applications on behalf of migrants, who need the sponsorship of employers to start the process.
They filed “around 2,500” applications from 2020 onwards “based on non-existent or falsified data,” prosecutors said, adding that migrants paid as much as 7,000 euros ($7,575.40) each to push the process along through various bureaucratic hoops.
Assets worth around 6 million euros were seized as profits from the alleged crimes, prosecutors said, indicating that some of the suspects accused of money laundering were linked to the Camorra, the Mafia in and around Naples.
Speaking to reporters, Salerno Chief Prosecutor Giuseppe Borrelli said investigations were accelerated after Meloni in June said she had reported her concerns about possible visa fraud to the national anti-Mafia prosecutor.
As part of its tough stance on immigration, Meloni’s rightist government has passed an array of measures to curb migrant arrivals, but has also expanded legal immigration channels in response to growing labor shortages.
Last year, it raised quotas for work visas for non-EU citizens to a total of 452,000 for the period 2023-2025, an increase of nearly 150 percent from the previous three years. In 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, Italy issued just 30,850 visas.
The system is massively oversubscribed, with 151,000 places available for 2024 alone, and nearly 244,000 requests made in the first 10 days of the opening of the procedure, according to the interior ministry.
Last month Meloni said a disproportionate amount of applications had come from Campania — the economically depressed region comprising Naples and its Camorra mafia — raising alarm bells.
Migrant rights advocates say excessive red tape facilitates visa abuse, and, calling for a reform of the system, say it typically benefits undocumented migrants already in Italy, who use the quotas to legalize their situation.
More than 40 held in Italy for migrant visa fraud after Meloni complaints
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More than 40 held in Italy for migrant visa fraud after Meloni complaints
- Forty-four people were apprehended, including 13 put in jail, 24 under house arrest and seven in custody
- Prosecutors said the suspects filed fraudulent visa applications on behalf of migrants
US abstains in UN vote voicing support for Ukraine
- The resolution also called for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire and “comprehensive, just and lasting peace“
- The US delegation had pressed for a separate vote on paragraphs involving Ukraine’s territorial integrity and international law but this idea was rejected
UNITED NATIONS: The UN General Assembly voiced support for Ukraine Tuesday on the fourth anniversary of Russia’s invasion, with the United States among countries abstaining from the vote.
The assembly passed a resolution saying it was committed to “the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders.”
It passed by a tally of 107 countries in favor, 12 against and 51 abstentions, which included the United States.
The resolution also called for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire and “comprehensive, just and lasting peace.”
The US delegation had pressed for a separate vote on paragraphs involving Ukraine’s territorial integrity and international law but this idea was rejected.
The transition from Joe Biden to Donald Trump in the White House last year has seen firm, unconditional US support for Ukraine cool dramatically.
Trump has brought Russian leader Vladimir Putin back in from the diplomatic cold and Washington has repeatedly refused to condemn the Russian invasion of 2022.
US deputy ambassador Tammy Bruce said she welcomed the UN appeal for a ceasefire.
But she said the resolution includes “language that is likely to distract” from diplomatic efforts to end the war rather than support them. She did not identify these words.
Still, leaders of the G7 global powers, including Trump, on Tuesday reaffirmed their “unwavering support for Ukraine” in a statement on the fourth anniversary of the invasion.
A month after Trump returned to power in January 2025, the United States voted against a UN General Assembly resolution calling for a “just and lasting peace” to end the war.
The US delegation later won Security Council passage of a Russian-backed resolution that called for peace but made no mention of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, frustrating Ukraine’s European allies.
Until then, the council had failed to speak out on the war because Russia consistently used its veto power.
“Despite peace efforts led by the US and supported by Europe, Russia continues to demonstrate no genuine willingness to stop this aggression,” Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mariana Betsa said.
Russia’s deputy ambassador Anna Evstigneeva answered, saying Ukraine should focus on diplomacy to end the war “rather than initiating yet another politicized vote.”
In Washington, Ukraine’s Ambassador to the US Olga Stefanishyna urged the Trump administration to intensify pressure on Russia.
“We hope that the US government this particular day... will get to the understanding that the language which is understood by Russians is not the dialog or diplomatic effort, it’s the pressure,” Stefanishyna told reporters.
She expressed hope that US lawmakers would soon pass a bill imposing tariffs and secondary sanctions on countries doing business with Russia in order to choke its economy and ability to finance the war.
Stefanishyna added that Ukraine is in desperate need of air defenses at a time when Russia has been intensifying its attacks on civilians and critical infrastructure during a brutal winter.
While acknowledging that “it’s too premature to speak about any settlement in the nearest period of time,” she said that any deal to end the war must include powerful US and EU Security guarantees.
