Luca Bracco – The Undercover Agent
Just as important as the "eyewitnesses" was an undercover operative planted on board a rescue ship run by Save the Children. Prosecutors believed his reports could give the accusations weight and legitimacy.
In May 2017, an undercover police officer boarded the Vos Hestia in Malta, presented to the crew as a firefighter employed by IMI Security under the false name Luca Bracco. The first officer of the Vos Hestia noticed something was off immediately: "I asked him about his work as a fireman and he just went blank. Then, when he thought people weren't looking, he pulled out a little camera and took plenty of pictures."
Bracco came, added to the security team at the last minute, as a favour, by IMI Security's owner: Cristian Ricci, a 43-year-old former Italian naval officer who had spent six years in the coast guard before moving into private security. Ricci offered Save the Children the extra pair of hands free of charge. Unusual, but not unwelcome. They needed all the help they could get. Most of his team, like Ricci himself, had backgrounds in the police.
To the most of the STC workers, Ricci and Bracco seemed exactly what they appeared to be: professional, dedicated, glad to help. Almost nothing suggested otherwise.
But Ricci's team had already been feeding information to the Italian police before Bracco ever set foot on the ship. Bracco's role was to embed, corroborate what they had reported, and find out whether any of the rescue workers were breaking the law. From their position aboard the Vos Hestia, Ricci's men had a clear view of every other rescue vessel operating nearby. One crew interested prosecutors more than any other: the German Iuventa, run by Jugend Rettet, the crew most strongly suspected.
Based on reporting by Richard Hall, GlobalPost Investigations / The World (PRX), June 2018.
Later that month, Bracco delivered his "evidence" to his superiors in the national police in Corigliano Calabro, the town where the coast guard had directed the Vos Hestia to disembark hundreds of newly rescued people. Police arrested three alleged boat drivers as a result. Bracco himself was unable to show any collusion between smugglers and the NGOs.
Despite this, Bracco's reports cited two incidents from 18 June 2017, in which he claimed to have observed the Iuventa crew towing empty boats towards Libyan waters – allegedly returning smuggling assets to traffickers – and meeting with a small boat he identified as belonging to smugglers. Bracco's statements formed two-thirds of the entire accusation.
At the acquittal in 2024, the judge specifically singled out Bracco's reports for their "reality-distorting" character. The central allegation, that the crew had returned boats and engines to smugglers , was dismissed outright: the crew had no legal obligation to prevent the recovery of boats, no criminal offence could be established, and intervening would in fact have endangered the people being rescued.
An undercover operation that produced no evidence of NGO-smuggler collusion went on to form the backbone of a case that took years, three bugged ships, over 40 wiretapped phones, five investigative units, and more than €3 million to fall apart.