Investigations into some Italian migrant reception centers have revealed that migrants were being housed in inhumane conditions. The migrants were threatened with losing their claim to asylum if they reported the abuse.
Police in the town of Latina, south of Rome, investigated some migrant reception centers and found cases of migrants being mistreated and housed in "inhumane conditions." The centers housed up to four times as many people as intended and had serious shortcomings in hygiene, police said.
Investigators also said the nonprofit administrators who managed the centers had embezzled millions of euros. Some had threatened to expel any migrants who tried to report them to authorities. Six people were arrested as a result of the investigations.
Money allocated for centers spent for personal use
All of those arrested are Italians between the ages of 27 and 40, and managed various migrant reception centers. They are accused of fraud, aggravated fraud, fraud in providing public services, and abuse.
One of those arrested was allegedly paying rent on a property designated as housing for migrant reception, when it was owned by his parents, who received a total of 141,000 euros. Investigators claimed the man, a 35-year-old, had also padded his salary over the course of two years, reaching a salary of 5,500 euros per month. He managed another nonprofit in which his mother was listed as the administrator, to which he had transferred nearly 300,000 euros for cleaning services that were never performed, police said. In one case, police even verified that some of the money was used to pay for a banquet to celebrate the baptism of one of the administrator's sons.
"If you file a report, no asylum"
Investigators said the migrants in the reception centers suffered various hardships, from lack of hot water to insufficient plumbing, structures not up to code and serious overcrowding. Those who tried to complain were met with threats, such as, "If you file a report, I'll have your reception privileges revoked."
One of the nonprofit administrators, despite having received over four million euros from the prefecture in just over two years, hosted the migrants in "overcrowded structures in inhumane conditions", investigators said. The investigators found that in some of the centres, the number of migrants was four times higher than capacity.
Investigations began after some of the migrants housed in the centers filed reports complaining of constant delays in receiving their allowances.