Conte’s renovation bonus designed to generate scams
It is true that Five Star politics has always been linked to populism more unbridled but the two measures that characterized Giuseppe Conte’s mandate were the citizenship income and bonuses for renovations. And if the income was launched by the yellow – green government in which the League was also there, the second was launched in the yellow – red one, in which the Democratic Party was there. The first measure gave rise to limited scams, moreover on a personal basis. It was a demagogic measure to gain votes, a real exchange between citizens, especially in the South where the measure had great success with consequent electoral success for the Movement.
Instead the bonus mechanism seems to have been designed to generate serial scams and of a very high amount, as the Draghi government has already noticed, also supported by the Five Star Movement with admirable political coherence. The then Minister of Economy of the Draghi government, Daniele Franco, said: “It remains essential to avoid further scams which are among the largest that this Republic has seen”. Draghi instead said: “Those who thunder the most today about the superbonuswho say that these frauds don’t count, that we have to carry on anyway… well, these are some of those who wrote the law and they allowed work to be done without controls. If we are in this situation it is because a system was built that provided for very few controls. And if the superbonus slows down today it is due to the seizures decided by the judiciary for fraudulent matters for 2.3 billion. But of course the sums under investigation are much, much higher.”
In an article in the Corriere from some time ago (the situation has now worsened) we read: “At the end of July the certain expenditure for the Treasury reached 74.2 billion, relating to works already completed and if to these we add the figures for interventions for which at least one declaration relating to the progress of the works has been presented (the so-called “Sal”, possible when 30 and 60% of the works have been completed) the amount reaches over 91 billion. And the works already started in the condominiums and for which a Sal has not yet been presented are missing, all the subsidized works for static consolidation (ENEA does not detect the “earthquake” Superbonus data) and finally the interventions that will be carried out albeit with reduced rates , in 2024 and 2025. The original spending forecast was 33.6 billion”.
Panorama reported in September a cost of over 120 billion euros. The law was actually made not badly but very badly, effectively preventing the State from checking the certifications that should be made by the project managers and are often made by compliant consultants from the same company. Let’s also assume that there are condominium administrators of less than eminent honesty and that’s it. The question to ask would be whose profits?
In reality, all this contraption didn’t even help save money for condominium owners, given that prices then increased so much that they paid as much as they did before, if not more. And this is only at the level of bonus collection, without counting scams on non-existent renovations. In a country as mischievous as Italy it should have been easy to predict what would happen and yet we proceeded anyway, indeed there is even talk of prolonging the criminal measures. Giorgia Meloni said: “An accounting tragedy that weighs on the shoulders of Italians”, as well as “the biggest scam against the State“. The government has acted by further restricting the criteria, as Draghi had done, but the drain continues to weigh on public finances.
READ ALSO: Fraud on building bonuses, 284 million seized in Milan
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