The INPS paid him his disability pension, only to then ask him for the money back because he would not have been entitled to it. According to the Court of Rimini, however, it was the social security institution that had made a mistake in disbursing the contribution. Error committed without intent on the part of the recipientthe labor judge, Lucio Ardigò, had ruled, having established last April that the sum received (around 70 thousand euros) by a young man from Rimini, one hundred percent disabled since childhood, it should not have been returned. In recent days, also the Court of Appeal of Bolognalabor section, accepted the reasons expressed by the Rimini court, completely rejecting the appeal presented by INPS, who demanded the repayment of the sum through monthly instalments. A debt that the family of the invalid, now of age and represented by the lawyer Maria Luisa Trippitelli of the Rimini Court, would have had to pay off in 60 years.
The lawyer Trippitelli
The national social security institute accused the boy, suffering from a genetic disease which made him incapable of independently carrying out even the most banal actions of daily life, of having continued to receive the disability pension during the years in which he lived abroad with his parents (his mother is now his support administrator), but this is not permitted by Italian law for those who reside permanently outside the national borders.
In analyzing the reasons for the appeal against INPS, Judge Ardigò had noted obvious shortcomings on the part of the Social Security Institute. The disability pension, for example, had never been revoked even though the support administrator had forwarded the documents communicating the transfer, as also happened with the Aire (Registry of Italians residing abroad) and with all the authorities competent Italian administrative and police authorities. And about that Italian law is very clear: it states that INPS could have requested the repayment of the entire sum received “only if the existence of fraud on the part of the person who unduly received pension payments is proven”. For judge Ardigò, however, “on the part of the pension recipient and his support administrator there was no willful misconduct or gross negligence in the formation of the debt”, as well as “they cannot be accused of any omission in submitting the documentation necessary to obtain and maintain the right to a pension”. Motivations also shared by the Bolognese judges, who have condemned the INPS to pay the legal costs.
