A new scandal is dogging authorities in Rome after an investigation revealed that hundreds of its property assets are being rented out for next to nothing.
Luxury flats in expensive districts of the capital are being let by the city council to private tenants for just a few euros a month.
Normal mortals can expect to pay an average of €1,040 a month for a one-bedroom apartment in the city centre and nearly €2,000 for three bedrooms.
Many of these luxury properties could fetch €5,000 per month. Instead the council is receiving as little as €10.
The investigation, designed to bring transparency into the council’s activities, found a huge system of political patronage in which, so far, 574 flats, many in historic buildings, have been allocated to well-connected Roman contacts.
It is anticipated that the continuing investigation of Rome’s entire property portfolio will reveal a higher number.
An internal audit team suspects that council officials were favouring their political allies, business cronies and possibly their own relatives.
In a statement on Tuesday, Rome special commissioner Francesco Paolo Tronca, who is heading the investigation, said: “The contractual rents are well below the minimum market value. In many cases, the rents are a few dozen euros per month.”
Tronca received the assignment following the November resignation of Rome’s former mayor Ignazio Marino, who was forced out over a personal expenses scandal.
“The rents were dramatically lower than the minimum market value,” he said in a statement.
Clearly, tens of millions of euros have been lost to the scam. The council calculated that a portfolio of 600 properties brought in just €2.2 million a year when it could have been earning €247 million euros on the open market.
The bargains include an apartment in Borgo Pio, close to St Peter’s Basilica, for €10 per month; one in Corso Vittorio Emanuele, one of Rome's main streets, for €24 per month; one with a view of the Imperial Forum at €23 per month and one on Via del Colosseo at €26 per month.
Comments
Making the same audit in Portugal will be complicated by the Portuguese Government only apparently owning one building. A court house. Everything else now being hidden from the Troika should they insist - as with Greece - that some of Portugal's public debts are paid for from the Portuguese public sector property portfolio.