As part of an investigation, Italy's Guardia di Finanza (Italy’s financial police, responsible for combating financial crime, tax evasion and smuggling) have filed reports with the state prosecutor's office in the southern city of Matera against 72 people for allegedly aiding and abetting clandestine immigration.

The investigation has thus far brought to light some 5,119 requests to bring this number of non-EU nationals into Italy in an illegal manner and focused on "requests made as part of the 'decreto flussi' in 2023 and 2024 at the Matera prefect's office, with the others at other prefect's offices."

Each year the Italian government publishes a decree in which it announces how many seasonal visas/working visas for non-EU workers it is offering. This is known as the 'decreto flussi' or 'flow decree'. Employers must apply for permits on designated "click days", and applications are processed on a first-come, first-served basis, which is why the quotas are usually quickly filled.

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'Fraudulent system for filing requests'

Those 72 individuals against whom reports have been filed are business owners, managers of tax assistance offices, and other persons who facilitated the preparation of illicit requests.

The investigation led to the discovery of a "fraudulent system of the presentation of requests to facilitate the entrance of foreign workers into Italy for employment in the agriculture, animal husbandry, and tourism sectors."

Those for whom the requests were presented were from Bangladesh, Morocco, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, India, Senegal, Egypt, and Albania.

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'Permits granted have been revoked'

Of the many companies inspected by the financial police, 34 were found to have falsely claimed a need for foreign labor despite lacking the production capacity to justify their requests, according to a statement on the case.

"Accompanying the fraudulent requests made on the interior ministry website as part of click days was false documentation in the form of ID documents, certification statements, and substitute declarations, as well as VAT and other tax statements," the statement said.

The Matera prefect's office immediately revoked the permits that were fraudulently obtained, "preventing the entrance onto national territory of non-EU irregular immigrants."