Cosenza public prosecutor Mario Spagnuolo said the investigation restored dignity to those who are vulnerable. This investigation restores dignity to the vulnerable," said Sapgnuolo, who called the story, which involved migrants in two reception centres, a shameful one. The investigation revealed that the two reception centres had effectively become agencies for labour exploitation, and that the center managers were complicit in the affair, working as intermediaries. Investigators said employers would call for three or four farmhands at a time to work harvesting potatoes or strawberries, or to work as shepherds in the Sila highlands. The migrant reception centre managers would then select the migrants to perform the work and take them to the job site, pocketing the 35 euros issued to each of the migrants by the Italian government. Spagnuolo said the investigation began when a migrant filed a police report explaining that when he realized he was being exploited and requested more from the employers for his work, he was fired. Police said about 30 refugees were involved between both centres. They were mainly Senegalese, Nigerian and Somali. Col. Fabio Ottaviani, the provincial Carabinieri police chief of Cosenza, said the investigation revealed "actual slave trading that had been going on for some time." Wiretaps led investigators to understand how the migrants were chosen, based on how mild-mannered and physically strong they were, Ottaviani said. He said the migrants were were treated like slaves and paid 15 euros per day at most. "It's an amount that for them that was a lot compared to where they come from, but of course it's unthinkable for a civilised country," he said. Of the 14 suspects who were issued precautionary detention, two were placed in jail, four on house arrest, and the remaining eight on mandatory residence. The suspects are accused of illegal intermediation and work exploitation (a new crime, being charged for the first time), abuse of office, and attempted aggravated fraud to obtain public funding. The president and two managers from one reception centre are accused of having illegally recruited the refugees entrusted to their care into under-the-table work as farm labourers and shepherds for various area farming companies, with the owners being complicit. The center managers will also have to answer to charges of manipulating the refugee attendance sheets, as the migrants were registered as present in the centres when they weren't, in order to obtain government funding designed to support the centre's operations in hosting them. (ANSAmed).

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(Source: ANSA)