Owning a castle has never been easier. In 2017, Italy’s State Property Agency made international headlines by announcing that the country would be giving away over a hundred castles for free. The only catch? Takers must promise to restore the dilapidated structures and turn them into tourist sites. (The program builds on an existing initiative in which the Agency gives historical federally-owned properties to local authorities for restoration.) At first glance, this program looks like a win for everyone. The Italian federal government no longer has to deal with crumbling historic castles, the properties will be cleaned up and made available to tourists, and lucky entrepreneurs and local governments can reap the profits. Unfortunately, however, there are reasons to worry that this program, like so many other castle restoration initiatives, will end up sapped by corruption, money laundering, collusion, and nepotism.

 Corruption and related malfeasance is quite common in the context of castle ownership and restoration. This is not all that surprising, given that corruption is a perennial issue within the construction industry as a whole. All of the usual problems in that sector—including bribery in the bidding process, collusion to funnel work to friends and family, embezzlement, and the substitution of substandard materials—apply in the specific context of castle restoration. On top of that, real estate has long been a favorite of those involved in money laundering due to the lower scrutiny that real property transactions receive, at least in comparison to stock or other commodities. But in addition to these familiar risk factors, castle restoration projects have several additional distinctive features that make them even more vulnerable to corruption than comparable construction projects and real estate transactions: