BoI sounds alarm on 'criminal contamination in economy'

(ANSA) - ROME, JUL 31 - Enzo Serata, the director of the Bank of Italy's Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF), on Wednesday sounded the alarm about "the persistence of the danger of contamination of the legal economy by organized crime".
    Addressing a hearing in the Lower House, Serata spoke, among other things, about the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), a huge programme that seeks to make the Italian economy Greener and more modern with the help of over 190 billion euros in EU grants and low-interest loans.
    He said the NRRP funds were "an extraordinary opportunity for development and growth" but also offer "further opportunities to criminal organizations, which are interested in entering the sectors that most benefit from public contracts and in conditioning the activities of public administrations through various forms of corruption".
    Serata added that the UIF estimates that value of money laundering was around 25-35 billion euros a year in Italy in the 2018-2022 period, around 1.5-2.0% of GDP.
    He said that a UIF study had uncovered that "more than 106,000 companies, about 2% of the total registered in the business registry in the 2005-2020 period, were found to be potentially close to organized crime". (ANSA).