The EU is no stranger to elaborate scams on the part of citizens. But the pick of the crop may well be among the web of bogus dairies and contracts discovered in an Italian government inquiry into milk production contracts, spurred by Rome's ongoing dispute with the EU over quota-busting.

One of the strangest anomalies unearthed was that of a dairy with a herd of some 1,500 cows supposedly based on the fifth floor of a building overlooking Piazza Navona in the heart of Rome.

And for good measure according to that dairy's books the herd had been rented out 12 times over the past year and produced some six billion lire worth of milk.