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ROME -- Italy is still rocked by a scandal which broke a few days ago, when a prominent newspaper disclosed that more than a half of the aid collected for Kosovo-Metohija's refugees in a months-long drive has not reached those it was meant for.
The Panorama newspaper said that a part of the aid collected in the drive, code-named Arcobaleno (Rainbow), has been donated to the government in Tirana, a part has found its way to the black market, and the rest is untraceable.
Interior Minister Rosa Russo Jervolino said late on Sunday that the sudden and unexpected end of the war was the reason why the relief aid has not reached the Kosovo-Metohija refugees.
A suspicion, picked up by the Italian media from Germany's Bild newspaper on Monday, of the Mafia's involvement in the Arcobaleno scandal, has gone unanswered.
During the five-month-long drive, Italians collected a total of 2,300 containers of foodstuffs, medical supplies and clothing, of which only 1,050 have been distributed to refugees through the proper channels.
Another 650 containers are still waiting in the ports of Bari (Italy) and Durres and Tirana (Albania).
Much of the aid has never left Bari, while 250 containers have been returned from Albania because the food and medical supplies' shelf life had meanwhile expired.
Some Italian companies even packed blocks of wood with the aid, to add to the weight.
Panorama learns that 350 containers of food and medicine have been given to the government in Tirana and used for the Albanian army.
Marco Vitale, coordinator of private funds for collecting financial aid under the Arcobaleno drive, says that the drive gleaned 129 billion lire (nearly 129 million German marks).
Of this sum, 70 million G-marks were approved by June 30 for financing 54 projects, 38 of them in Albania.
The rest of the investment was in projects in Italy, Macedonia and the Yugoslav republic of Montenegro, and only one in the U.N.-secured Kosovo-Metohija province of the Yugoslav republic of Serbia, according to Vitale.
However, he added, more than 10 million G-marks have been placed with the Gramen bank for financing small companies in Kosovo-Metohija.
According to a report on Monday, 200 Arcobaleno containers have been urgently sent to Montenegro after a long wait in Bari.
The Bari prosecutor's office says that the government's decision that the contents of the rest of the containers be checked and repacked could cost as much as the Arcobaleno drive itself.