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Italian officials recorded only a modest uptick in reports of potentially illicit payments last year, but began systematically cross-referencing them against government databases and other sources of intelligence to identify emerging risks and pinpoint financial crimes. Italy's financial intelligence unit, UIF, received 113,000 suspicious transaction reports in 2020, an increase of nearly 7 percent from 2019, the agency disclosed in a 144-page report Thursday. The upward trend accelerated in the first five months of 2021, with the volume of STRs rising 30 percent above last year's level. "The health emergency and the related economic crisis amplified the threats ... to...