ROME, April 4 (Xinhua) -- Italian police issued at least 22 arrest warrants and seized 600 million euros (650.93 million U.S. dollars) as part of a large-scale probe into a fraud of Italian funds from the European Union's (EU) NextGenerationEU recovery plan, authorities said on Thursday.

The Italian financial police (GdF) told local media the suspects allegedly tried to embezzle EU funds intended for Italy.

The 22 arrests were carried out in Italy, Austria, Romania and Slovakia in cooperation with respective national police forces, according to European public prosecutor's office. Eight suspects were placed under pre-trial detention and 14 were held under house arrest.

The GdF said two others were also involved in the investigation, and prohibited from practicing their profession.

The houses and businesses of all suspects were searched and assets worth over 600 million euros were preemptively seized to reimburse the total amount the suspects allegedly tried to divert. These included luxury flats and villas, cryptocurrency, jewellery, and luxury cars.

The European prosecution office said the group allegedly orchestrated the fraud scheme between 2021 and 2023 to obtain funds from the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan, which is part of the Recovery and Resilient Facility, the main pillar of the NextGenerationEU recovery plan.

"In 2021, the members of the criminal association applied for receiving non-repayable grants to support digitalization, innovation and competitiveness of small- and medium-size companies, with the purpose of expanding their business activities to foreign markets," prosecutors said.

"The suspects allegedly created and deposited false corporate balance sheets to show the companies were active and profitable, whereas in fact they were non-active and fictitious."

A network of accountants, service providers and public notaries helped them obtain the 600 million euros from the Italian NRRP over two years. Once they had received the advance payments, the suspects allegedly moved the advance funds to bank accounts in Austria, Romania and Slovakia.

Italian police also explained that the suspects operated through "a sophisticated money-laundering scheme" and utilized advanced technologies such as Virtual Private Networks, crypto-assets, cloud servers located in uncooperative countries and specialized artificial intelligence software.

Italy has been allotted 194.4 billion euros as part of the EU post-COVID recovery and resilience facility. So far, it has spent 45.6 billion, according to the Department of European Affairs. (1 euro = 1.09 U.S. dollar) Enditem

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