Modena, August 17, 2026 – They requested and obtained six million euros in public funds to renovate properties damaged by the devastating 2012 earthquake but only used 4.3 million for the actual reconstruction of the buildings, unlawfully retaining, according to the accusations, the difference. The two Modena entrepreneurs were jointly sentenced by the Emilia-Romagna Court of Auditors to pay 1.6 million euros in favor of the president of the Emilia-Romagna Region, in his capacity as commissioner.
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The Guardia di Finanza Investigation
In fact, the Court partially accepted the request of the regional Prosecutor’s Office, which instead demanded the full ‘return’ of the amount. The case emerged as part of a broader Guardia di Finanza investigation for aggravated fraud to obtain public funds related to post-earthquake reconstruction. According to the investigations carried out by the financial police, the two entrepreneurs allegedly managed to obtain the exorbitant amount through overbilling, inflated costs for the restoration and adaptation of eight properties used as industrial warehouses in the ceramic district of Camposanto. Essentially, both, to obtain the contribution exceeding what was due, according to the Court of Auditors, would have overestimated the damage caused by the May 2012 earthquake, since the properties in their possession were already degraded before the earthquake, then ensuring that the company in charge of the work reported inflated costs through overbilling.
The Funding Request
The funding request dates back to April 1, 2014 when, according to the Guardia di Finanza investigations, the two defendants requested a public contribution of 8,852,966 euros attaching all the required technical documentation to the application, including a series of documents signed by an architect who was acquitted by the Court of Auditors (as was the company that carried out the work and its legal representative), specifying that they had “already received, for the damages caused by the earthquake, an insurance indemnity of 810,000 euros.”
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Recalculated Amount
In 2015, a contribution of over five million euros was then granted to the two entrepreneurs but in 2016 a “request for adjustment of the already granted contribution due to a design change during the work prescribed by the AUSL” was submitted, resulting in the amount being recalculated in 2017 to five million eight hundred eighty-nine thousand euros. The prosecutor’s requests were only partially accepted by the Court of Auditors, according to whom the two entrepreneurs would have indeed improperly acquired 1.6 million euros out of a total receipt of 5.9 million, thus spending only part of the obtained sum and therefore demonstrating “willful awareness of the illicit enrichment and appropriating the difference, an amount for which they must be condemned.” Hence the allegation of financial damage, which however does not take into account, obviously, the money actually used for the restoration of the damaged properties.
