EU funds, checks on 11.3 billion disbursed. Fake women's enterprises under fire
In the last 18 months, the Guardia di Finanza carried out 15,000 interventions. Companies in the name of women run by former (male) directors discovered
5' min read
5' min read
Women in charge only on paper, old projects dressed up as new ideas. On the grand stage of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (Pnrr) calls for tenders, a double illusion is being played out: businesses that are dyed pink at the last minute and established activities that are recycled as frontier start-ups. Behind the forms and self-certifications, a chess game in which form trumps substance, with resources for recovery in danger of vanishing into the folds ofthe most refined frauds.
The controls of the Nucleo speciale spesa pubblica e repressione frodi comunitarie della Guardia di finanza now reveal the trick: underneath the numbers of the rebirth supported by the Pnrr are also transformations. This is revealed by the results of the 15,000 checks carried out over the past 18 months on financing, disbursements and contracts worth a total ofEUR 11.3 billion. The focus concerns all sectors affected by the measure and on which the attention of the European Public Prosecutor is high: public infrastructure, support for business competitiveness, innovation, digital transformation, training, development, education, research,health and public administration. But let us go in order.
Pink companies
.Behind many applications for access to the Women's Enterprise Fund, the story is almost always the same. A family company, often historically run by a man, suddenly changes face. All it takes is a meeting, a quick variation at the Chamber of Commerce, and there goes a daughter, a wife, a relative, who becomes the legal representative. On the surface, a step forward for gender equality. In reality, the management sticks to the old ways, while the new 'entrepreneur' goes on with her life, busy elsewhere or completely unaware of her newly assumed formal role.
The investigators' files abound with photocopied cases: companies where thefemale presence is only aformal requirement, exhibited at the right moment to climb the rankings. Audits cross-reference names, duties and trace the distance between the name on the notice board and who really holds the reins of the company, according to the classic pattern of the (in this case) front man. Thus, resources intended to strengthen the female entrepreneurial fabric risk getting lost in a game of mirrors, with the sole aim of accessing funds.
The 'return' of new projects
.The second strand of fraud focuses on innovation, or rather its simulacrum. Entrepreneurial projects that present themselves as new ventures, but in reality already have an established past. This is the case of companies dusting off activities started years earlier, fishing out old invoices and reassembling them to pretend to be start-ups born in the wake of the Pnrr. An administrative restyling that promises a future, but only photographs the past. Funding applications tell stories of growth, development, digital revolution. The checks, however, reconstruct chains of altered documents, accommodating dates and recycled ideas. Projects that, instead of triggering innovative drive, only serve to intercept precious resources. And those who really would have new ideas often remain outside the door.
