Carabinieri police forces in the Tuscan town of Livorno and the province of Naples, assisted by a special Carabinieri task force for labor inspectorate and local police officers have issued home detention custody orders for five people, all of them originally from Naples.

The suspects are accused of various charges, including aiding and abetting clandestine migration, impersonation and falsehood perpetrated by a private subject.

Inquiries into this case began in June 2024. Provisions for the arrest orders were issued after a complex inquiry conducted by the investigative section of Livorno, in Tuscany, coordinated by the prosecutor's office in Livorno, which included telephone wiretaps and telematic analysis.

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A complex inquiry

The inquiry was launched, explained the Carabinieri, after the prefecture signalled "unsual access" to the Interior Ministry's portal for registering employment permits, and due to the "unusual number" of regularization requests for non-EU seasonal laborers (according to the Decree on Migration flows) who are apparently traceable to firms in the territory of Livorno.

Investigators set about trying to verify how those who were under investigation had set up an illegal "Fiscal Assistance Center (CAF)", specializing in processing thousands of entry requests for Italy for alleged non-EU laborers and producing forged documents traceable back to the (unaware) legal representatives of hundreds of firms, 24 of these were operating in the province of Livorno.

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Searches and seizures take place on 'Click Day'

Investigators carried out a number of searches in November 2024, which is the day, known as 'Click Day' when people wanting to register a request for an employment permit can lodge their claim on the ministry website.

On that day, the Carabinieri seized tens of devices (among them PCs, digital archive devices and smartphones), as well as cloned and forged stamps purporting to have been issued by the public administration of the municipality. Officers also gathered hundreds of forged and digitalized identity documents, not to mention a voluminous amount of forged digital and paper documentation, effectively blocking tens of thousands of false employment requests from being presented to the territorial government offices across Italy.

The Prefect of Livorno, Giancarlo Dionisi, commended the Livorno Carabineri command, and the territorial sections involved, describing the operation as "brilliant," and calling the alleged crime, "an articulated fraudulent system aimed at aiding and abetting clandestine migration through the exploitation of the telematic procedures of the so-called 'Click Day.'"

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