Bagheria (Palermo), illegal waste trafficking: 5 precautionary measures executed, assets worth 800.000 euros confiscated

The Carabinieri of the Company of Bagheria they carried out 5 precautionary measures, issued by the Preliminary Investigations Judge of the Court of Palermo, at the request of the District Anti-Mafia Directorate for the crime of organized illicit waste trafficking.

The provision is the result of a complex and meticulous activity by the Bagheria Operations Section, in the period from December 2022 to February 2023, structured by traditional investigations corroborated by the use of sophisticated technical instruments: the investigation made it possible to outline the operations of a company that was supposed to deal exclusively with construction and the transport of special waste non-hazardous products produced by third parties, but which instead had constituted a real illegal landfill on the land he owned for the organized carrying out of a usual collection, transport and concealment activity by burying rubble killers, or inert construction materials from active construction sites in Bagheria and neighboring municipalities.

In particular, in just 2 months of monitoring, at least 280 discharges of anti-fabricides were documented, with an average of 7 per day performed without interruption, for a total of approximately 1.400 tons of inert material.

The cost required by the company to dispose of each single load ranged from 70 to 100 euros for a profit of approximately 15.000 euros per month. The system would have allowed not only to reduce the company's costs and obtain profits that would otherwise not have been achievable, but it also allowed the various entrepreneurs who turned to the company in question to increase their earnings and pay less taxes disposing of their waste illegally, because it is not traceable.

As verified by the observation, control and shadowing services of the military, for the purposes of burying inert materials, the investigated would have deliberately wreaked havoc on the agricultural land they owned, transforming it into real landfills. In fact, the activity of burying waste, with trucks and mechanical shovels, depositing special waste on the ground and creating internal roads to facilitate the traffic of heavy vehicles, occurred through 3 separate terraces of land used as olive groves and the planting of other saplings, but what else they are simply clumsy concealments of waste with topsoil. Particularly alarming were the episodes in which waste was destroyed by fire, after being were piled up by the drivers of the vehicles.

The company's activity is therefore abusive and without any authorization not registered in the waste register and not present in the list of landfills.

A particularly significant aspect of the criminal activity concerns the area in question; in fact the company continued to operate despite the entire territory being subject to landscape and seismic constraints, as well as affected by a state of instability.

During the operation the following were carried out:

˗ 2 house arrest orders, paid by the managers of the Bagheria company responsible for waste disposal;

˗ 3 obligations to report to the Judicial Police, towards the drivers of heavy vehicles and company employees;

˗ the preventive seizure of approximately 10.000 mXNUMX of the company's land, 7 trucks and 2 mini excavators.

The land and heavy vehicles used, following a proposal from the Palermo Investigative Unit, they were already under asset seizure, issued in December 2022 by the Court of Palermo, because they fall within the availability of Nicolò Testa, already convicted for mafia association and died last November 7th.

The evidentiary framework collected as part of the property investigations, coordinated by the Public Prosecutor's Office, was able to demonstrate how the goods in the availability, first of Nicolò Testa himself e subsequently of his heirs, were in reality ithe fruit of his illicit activities, so allowing the Court of Palermo to issue the confiscation order, carried out this morning by the Carabinieri of the Investigative Unit, concerning assets estimated at approximately 800.000 euros:

- an individual business, operating in the construction sector, with the related set of company assets;

- 3 plots of land.