2016 earthquake in the Marche: the anti-mafia register was meant to keep the clans out, prosecutors find them on the building sites as subcontractors

25 October 2026, 18:19

On 22 October the Guardia di Finanza, coordinated by the District Anti-Mafia Directorate in Ancona, carried out operation «Ricostruzione»: eight arrests, 51 under investigation, assets seized worth more than €57 million. According to investigators, the work paid for with public grants to rebuild homes in the Marche region after the 2016 earthquake was «subcontracted also to people linked to Calabrian and Campanian organised crime». The charges range from aggravated fraud to obtain public grants to corruption. Nobody, so far, has been convicted.

Among those arrested is a builder accused of external complicity in mafia association: for investigators he was the «hinge» between firms that were formally above board and those close to the clans. According to prosecutors, through his subcontracts people close to criminal organisations also worked on the sites, including two considered linked to a Campanian clan. Another strand concerns firms linked to Calabrian organised crime families and a ring of false invoices. The clans do not cause earthquakes. They arrive afterwards, together with the money.

And yet, on paper, the door was shut. Article 30 of Decree-Law 189 of 2016 created, specifically for this rebuilding, the Anti-Mafia Register of Contractors, kept by a unit of the Ministry of the Interior. In the «crater», that is the municipalities of the Marche, Umbria, Lazio and Abruzzo regions hit by the earthquake, every firm working on the rebuilding, public or private, in any capacity, must be listed in the register. Subcontractors included.

So how did the people close to the clans get onto the sites? According to the charges reported by Il Fatto Quotidiano, through firms registered in the names of front men. Formally the owners were other people. According to investigators, the firms were in fact controlled by a man already convicted on appeal of mafia association and by two people considered close to a Campanian clan. To list a firm in the register, the law requires the strictest anti-mafia check, the one that does not stop at the names on the documents and looks for signs of infiltration beyond whoever appears as the owner. According to investigators, it was precisely the front men who allegedly got round those checks. They were found by the Guardia di Finanza, ten years after the earthquake, not by the register.

The problem is bigger than the €57 million. By 31 May 2026, according to the special commissioner for the 2016 earthquake, more than €8 billion in public grants had already been paid out for private rebuilding: about €135 for every Italian, newborns included. The commissioner calls it «the largest building site in Europe». According to the charges, the clans had noticed too. The €57 million seized is less than a hundredth of those 8 billion. For all the rest, the register vouches.

So the question, for the anti-mafia unit of the Ministry of the Interior: were the firms registered to front men which, according to the charges, worked on the sites on behalf of those people listed in the register? And if they were, what did the check look at, beyond the names on the documents?

In the 2016 crater the anti-mafia authorities have a register. The clans, according to the charges, had a subcontract.

This article was prompted by a news item published in Il Fatto Quotidiano on 22 October 2026.