Italy finds illegal homes

MILAN - Agence France-Presse

Italian authorities last year found more than a million “phantom” homes built illegally, the government said yesterday, adding that this would boost tax revenues by 472 million euros.

The tax police launched an operation “of regularization of homes never officially registered... known as phantom homes,” the finance ministry said in a statement, adding that 1,081,698 such properties had been found so far.

The homes were found by comparing satellite images with the official land register and most of the properties discovered were in southern Italy in and around the cities of Naples, Cosenza, Salerno and Reggio Calabria.

Prime Minister Mario Monti’s government has launched a wide-ranging crackdown on tax evasion as Italy struggles under a debt of 1.9 trillion euros, around 120.1 percent of gross domestic product.