Alarm from the Court of Auditors about “appetites” for the Recovery Fund

The availability of the huge financial flows activated with the Recovery fund arouses many “appetites” in Sicily. The picture of criminal interests ready to intercept “unprecedented resources” was drawn by the regional prosecutor of the Court of Auditors, Gianluca Albo, in the press conference for the inauguration of the judicial year.

«It is possible to foresee – he said – that in the next ten years complex spending procedures will be activated along administrative paths in which the risk of waste and appropriation will lurk. Already there are signs of an aggregation of interests even higher than those of criminal rank. The objective is precisely the enormous funds destined for refreshments and recovery ». The Regional Prosecutor of the Court of Auditors is aware of the difficulties of intervention (“so many wooden heads will sprout”) and of the limitation of the resources available. Albo denounced, among other things, the shortage of staff in his office which is 42 per cent, “the highest in Italy”, and the enormous workload that weighs on the seven accounting magistrates in service: everyone must check well 338 administrations. Just to get an idea of ​​the limitations, Albo cited the figure of 7,500 complaints presented in 2020 to which only 500 open investigations correspond. In view of the arrival of the funds mobilized, the regional prosecutor will exercise not only a repressive but above all preventive activity, bearing in mind that Sicily “has one of the highest rates of distraction of public resources”.

Healthcare is the sector in which the most significant criticalities are encountered and not only from the tax point of view but also from the point of view of the efficiency of the services sometimes questioned due to the widespread non-use of highly specialized equipment. There are also cases of suspected expansion of expenses. Too much is spent, Albo pointed out, for the sanitation of the environments. The regional prosecutor has promoted various lines of investigation in connection with the ordinary judiciary. But the greatest attention is now turned to the new financial flows and to the collaboration, which the prosecutor has defined as “sometimes recalcitrant and sometimes conspiratorial”, of some public administrations. In some cases the Prosecutor has had to file criminal complaints because the information he asks for.