Three mortuary staff at a hospital on the island of Sicily have been placed under house arrest as part of the corruption probe.
Cervello Hospital where suspects work (file photo)(Image: Francesco Militello Mirto/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Italian cops are investigating hospital workers for sending the family of a dead Irishman to an undertaker’s to arrange his funeral – after allegedly taking a kickback from the company.
The Sunday Mirror reports that three mortuary staff at a hospital on the island of Sicily have been placed under house arrest as part of the corruption probe after cops filmed them receiving a €500 bribe from an employee of the funeral home.
It’s alleged the business in the city of Palermo paid the bribe to the three men so they would tell the family of the Irishman who died on the island in recent years to use that company to organise his funeral.
The family were completely innocent and unaware that the mortuary workers were making money out of their grief through the scam.
Cops issued a statement about the investigation that specifically mentioned the family of the dead Irishman but they did not say if he was a tourist or long-term resident of the island.
It can cost thousands of euro to organise a funeral in Italy but cops did not reveal if the body of the Irishman was repatriated for burial, which would have incurred even higher bills, or was laid to rest in Sicily.
The State Police headquarters in Palermo issued a statement earlier this week about their investigation, which centred on a hospital morgue in the city.
It said the Flying Squad, which investigates corruption, mounted an operation against three workers at the Cervello Hospital in the city and they were all placed under house arrest. They have been named in Italian media as Vincenzo Romano, 67, Onofrio Leonardo, 61, and Giuseppe Suriano, 56.
Police said: “They were considered seriously suspected of having committed, to varying degrees, the crimes of criminal conspiracy, corruption for acts contrary to official duties, and corruption in the exercise of their duties.”
And the force revealed that the investigation has been under way since 2024, and is being led by the Palermo Public Prosecutor’s Office.
It said that the investigation “relied on wiretaps, environmental surveillance, and computer communications” to uncover “a criminal conspiracy involving all three mortuary employees” and also “representatives of numerous local funeral homes”.
It added: “The suspects allegedly expedited procedures for the care and release of deceased bodies at the hospital, even when the required municipal authorisations were lacking.
“On some occasions, mortuary employees, again for financial compensation, allegedly favoured certain funeral homes, directing the families of the deceased to select them for the relevant services.
“Among the alleged incidents was the directing of the relatives of a deceased Irishman in Palermo to a funeral home, whose representatives were filmed paying one of the employees a bribe of €500.”
Cops also revealed that investigators fitted listening devices around the mortuary and recorded conversations between the three suspects, in which they spoke of how to stymie any police investigation into them.
That development came after they heard about a police investigation at another hospital and allegedly began to worry that they were being targeted.
Officers are said to be investigating others over the alleged scam.
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