St. Mark's Basilica, fired six ticket agents who were skimming tickets

They were skimming money from tickets at St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice: for this, six ticket agents at St. Mark’s Procuratoria were fired after an internal investigation. The mechanism was simple: according to a report in the Gazzettino, the six employees, who were in charge of the ticket offices at St. Mark’s cathedral, were pocketing part of the ticket money by charging the full price to those accompanying the disabled and the categories of visitors who were entitled to free or reduced admission. If the unfortunate visitors fell for it (the reductions, as per practice, are in fact in plain sight at the entrance to the basilica as well as on its website), the employees kept the ill-gotten gains for themselves.

At the moment, the Gazzettino also reports, it is not known how much the total amount of money embezzled amounts to. The fabrication discovered the scam simply by comparing the number of admissions with the daily income, and set off an internal investigation that brought the case to light.

For now, no comment is leaking out. “This affair,” First Prosecutor Carlo Alberto Tesserin told ANSA, “we have entrusted it to those in charge and I am confident that full light will be shed on what happened. We are obviously sorry.”

On the affair, the Prosecutor’s Office also issued a note stating that it “considered it inevitable to terminate six working relationships with its collaborators in charge of collecting access fees to its sites,” because “following rigorous internal investigations and in compliance with the adversarial procedures provided for by labor law, facts were ascertained that led to the breakdown of the indispensable relationship of trust with those directly involved.” The St. Mark’s Procuratorate, the statement further notes, “will continue to act with the utmost rigor and transparency to ensure that all visitor contributions are allocated to the operation and preservation of St. Mark’s Cathedral Basilica.”

First Procurator Tesserin, on behalf of all the Procurators of St. Mark’s, expresses the “enormous sorrow with which in the Procuratoria Council it was considered necessary to take this decision, necessary though painful, to protect the inestimable cultural heritage entrusted to the Procuratoria and out of respect for those who work and operate correctly and with high professionalism every day within it and in St. Mark’s Basilica.”

St. Mark's Basilica, fired six ticket agents who were skimming tickets

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