The Anti-Mafia Directorate in Southern Italy’s Bari region directed the operation, dubbed “Black Land,” which led to the seizure of US$ 34.5 million worth of companies, factories, trucks, and dumping sites.
Investigators discovered that waste was being produced and stored in Campania, Italy and then illegally dumped in different locations in Apulia, the “heel” of the Italian peninsula. In one case, the waste was dumped close to an archeological site.
According to Colonel Maurizio Favia, the chief officer of the Bari Anti-Mafia police, the four companies involved made around US$ 13.9 million a year by not properly treating the waste they disposed.
llegal waste dumping has been a problem in Italy for almost two decades.
Industrial waste treatment is expensive, and organized crime groups offer to dispose of it for a cheap price, environmental NGO Legambient says . Instead of properly treating the waste, they dump it or send it to developing countries.
In 1997, Carmine Schiavone, a former boss of the Camorra’s Casalesi clan, told the Parliamentary Inquiry Committee on Waste that Italian waste management was often handled by authorities only on paper while the actual transport and disposal was in the hands of the criminal clans.
The statement by Schiavone, who had become a “Mafia pentito”—a former organized crime figure who, following arrest, cooperates with authorities for a shorter sentence was declassified on Oct 31.
The Bari district’s Anti-Mafia prosecutor, Pasquale Drago, said in a press conference that authorities began investigations when they learned about Schiavone’s statements.
“Black Land” tracked the movement of the industrial waste from Campania to Apulia and found that it was first stored by the Sele Ambiente and Ilside companies.
Then, the organic, biodegradable portion of the waste was transferred to the Biocompost Irpino composting plant and, without undergoing any treatment, brought with fake documentation to a small town near Foggia, where it was dumped in a crater on farmland managed by the EDIL C company.
Non-organic waste, meanwhile, was managed by the Spazio Verde Plus company, also in the Foggia area. It was delivered from a parking lot owned by the Ecoball Bat company in Carapelle to the regions of Apulia, Campania, Basilicata and Molise.
Arrested were Donato Petronzi, Gerio Ciaffa, Erminio Arminio, Pasquale Martino Di Ieso, Giuseppe Zenga, Gianluca Cantarelli, Giuseppe Francesco Caruso, Giuseppe Gammarota, Francesco Di Leno, Donato Del Grosso, Claudio Durante, Francesco Pelullo, and Giuseppe De Nittis.
According to the Italian newswire ANSA, “ecomafia” criminal organizations earn around US$ 4.3 billion a year from illegally trafficking industrial waste.
By Guia Baggi. Special to OCCRP by Investigative Reporting Project Italy
