PALERMO – The extent of the embezzlement of EU funds that took place over a period of four years in the Cara migrant refuge in Mineo, has finally be clarified, putting the figure at over one million euros, investigators report.

 After more investigations carried out by the power of attorney of Caltagirone, it has been discovered that the scam, that took place at the extent of the incoming migrants’ welfare, has fraudulently claimed the extortionate sum from European Union funds through the dishonest amplification of numbers of migrants attested to be being housed by the organisation between 2011 and 2015.

 The considerable sum of pilfered money has, until this discovery, ended up in the pockets of the ATI, the temporary association of companies to which the running of the Cara organisation had been farmed out. Currently there are representatives of six of such companies being questioned: Sebastian Maccarrone, the director of Cara; Salvo Cali the president of the cooperative Sisifo and Roberto Roccuzzo, his advisor; Cosimo Zurlo, delegate administrator of the “Casa della solidarieta”, Giovanni Ferrera, director general of “Terra d’accoglienza” and Androma Varasano, an administratorary figure in Cara. They are all being investigated under the accusations of providing false and misleading information in the public sphere and for perpetuating a scam to glean unjustified funds from the EU.

 These inquiries follow on from the investigation of Italy’s undersecretary for Agricultural affairs, Giuseppe Castiglione for his alleged role in “procuring goods and services that were apparently never provided for the thousands of asylum seekers staying at the over-crowded Cara Mineo refugee centre in Sicily, which is the country’s largest structure”.

 The latest development to emerge from this mushrooming cloud of deceit, is that in addition to claiming money for goods and services that were never being provided to the intended recipients, the Cara organisation in Mineo, in the three years between 2012 and 2015, was gaining an excess of funds of over a million euros, from the EU due to “the dishonest exaggeration of refugee numbers within the institution.”

 These latest revelations serve to shed more light on the corrupt and debased behaviour of the officials involved in Cara. In addition to the “ghetto-like” squalor and overcrowding to which migrants were being subjected, the further fraudulent acquisition of funding from the EU, reveals the extent of the tangled web of lies that was being spun at the expense of those most in need.

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