Benevento, environmental pollution: seizure of 78 million euros in assets for the company GE.SE.SA

Benevento, this morning, the Carabinieri of the Group for Environmental Protection and Ecological Transition of Naples, following the outcome of a detailed and complex investigation coordinated by the Public Prosecutor's Office of Benevento, carried out, in collaboration with the Economic Police Unit and Financial Police of the Provincial Command of the Financial Police of Benevento, to a preventive seizure decree aimed at the confiscation for the equivalent of money, of movable and immovable assets available to the same company, for an amount of €78.210.529,00 towards the company GE.SE.SA – Sviluppo Servizi Sannio SpA, a company that currently manages the Integrated Water Service, or its segments, in multiple municipalities under the jurisdiction of ATO 1 Campania. The seizure was ordered, pursuant to articles. 19 and 53 of Legislative Decree 231/2001, for the administrative offense referred to in articles 24 (in relation to article 640 second paragraph of the criminal code) and 25 undecies (in relation to environmental crimes p. and p. from articles 452 bis cp, 137,256 and 258 of Legislative Decree 152/2006) Legislative Decree no. 231/2001, committed in Benevento in the years 2017, 2018, 2019, for not having adopted and efficiently implemented organizational and management models suitable for preventing the contested crimes, committed on behalf, in the interest and to the advantage of the company by its directors and by employees who held, at the time of the facts, management or management functions supervision within the institution.

The precautionary measure is part of the already well-known and detailed investigation, coordinated by the magistrates of the Public Prosecutor's Office of Benevento and conducted by the Ecological Operational Unit of the Carabinieri of Naples, relating to the serious pollution of the Calore and Sabato rivers which cross the province of Benevento, which in May of last year, had led to the preventive seizure, ordered by the Judge for Preliminary Investigations of the Court of Benevento of no. 12 purification plants managed by the same company, upon referral of no. 33 people (15 May 2020) and the application of no. 2 interdictory measures, for a duration of one year, with a ban on carrying out any entrepreneurial or professional activity in the sectors of water purification, waste management of any type and nature and the distribution of water for public consumption (June 2021) in the against the Manager of the operational management of the purification plants and the Assistant planner, of GESESA considered seriously suspected of crimes of environmental pollution, fraud in public supplies, aggravated fraud, illicit waste management, discharges of waste water without authorization and falsification of documents .

Previous investigations by the Prosecutor's Office had made it possible to acquire serious clues regarding a widespread and massive presence of direct discharges from the sewers of the Municipalities of Benevento city and the Province into the Calore and Sabato rivers due, in some cases, to the absence of purifiers, with introduction of polluting waste directly into waterways, in others due to the incorrect functioning of existing purifiers.

The modification of the original consistency of the environmental matrix of the rivers of the Samnite hydrographic basin and a structural imbalance characterized by a decline in ecological status or quality was, at the state of the documents, in the preliminary investigation phase and as circumstantial gravity, the result of a bad and fraudulent operational management of the plants by GE.SE.SA personnel. spa, the company that manages the purifiers.

With this conduct it was considered that only the private economic interests of the company were protected to the detriment of the common good represented by the need to prevent polluted or otherwise non-compliant wastewater from ending up in water courses, vital resources for our country and object of the assignment to GeSeSA by the Municipalities of water purification.

At present and at this stage, serious clues have been acquired - as deemed by the Court of Review of Naples, which had accepted the Prosecutor's appeal against the rejection of the investigating judge, against the two GESESA officials - regarding how the choice to neglect the purification plants managed by Ge.Se.Sa. in Sannio was the result of a company policy aimed at reducing the management costs of those plants. Well, in the continuation of the investigative activity, it was considered by the investigating judge, who accepted the prosecution's submission, that such illicit conduct, carried out by the directors and employees of GE.SE.SA., resulted in criminal liability -administrative of GE.SE.SA itself. pursuant to Legislative Decree Decree n. 231/2001. On this point, the GIP of the Court of Benevento states that "it appears undisputed that the company as a whole was used and functionally destined - enslaved - to the continuous and systematic commission of the crimes committed by the subjects who acted for it, so as to compose an entrepreneurial organization unitary, as deduced from the company organization chart and clearly highlighted by the content of the wiretaps and the declarations of the people informed of the facts". Indeed, the Prosecutor's Consultant deemed the failure to prepare the appropriate organizational models specifically calibrated to the risk of crime and the lack of information flows essential to the activity of the Supervisory Body to be ascertained. The GIP highlights how "the company in question had adopted, in the period of interest, an organizational model that was not consistent and functional to the specific control principles in relation to the type of activity carried out, so much so that it does not appear possible, with an analysis conducted a posteriori, to deduce no useful indication to effectively prevent the commission of environmental crimes. In essence, in the face of an only apparently functional SB, management MODELS were in fact adopted - particularly in the period between 2016 and 2018 - which were inconsistent and in any case not adequate to prevent and avoid the risk of commission of crimes, in light of of the provisions dictated by the Legislative Decree. 231/2001.” and the absolute lack of information flows until 2018: “although investigations were underway by the Judicial Authority at the purification plants managed by Ge.Se.Sa SpA, it does not appear that the aforementioned body has carried out any survey or control". The illicit conduct indicated allowed GE.SE.SA. Spa to achieve an illegitimate increase in one's financial position; the failure to carry out the necessary adaptation interventions (extraordinary and ordinary maintenance) allowed him to achieve a cost saving that can be quantified in the cost of missed investments and the failure to correctly manage the purification process as well as the disposal of liquid waste and sludge produced by the treatment purifying. These costs are already included in the tariff, recognized by the Municipalities to GeSeSa, of the Integrated Water Service which, pursuant to art. 154, paragraph 1, Legislative Decree. n.

The amount of the seizure corresponds to the unjust profit obtained by GeSeSa spa for the bad management referred to in the conduct mentioned above, and briefly for the lack of or inadequate purification of the waste water coming from the municipal purifiers subject to seizure, for each of the municipalities involved and for each year from 2016 to 26 June 2020 with reference only to the sewerage-purification system. For its determination, reference was made to the characteristics of each plant as resulting from the authorization documents and, on an equitable and prudential basis, only the costs that would have been necessary for the correct disposal of the waste water flowing into the plants in question were calculated. This value appeared more than adequate for carrying out a prudential estimate of the unfair profit in question as it was significantly lower than the corresponding list prices available on the market.

In the preliminary phase of execution of the seizure order, bank and/or financial assets held by the company have already been identified and systematic search operations are also being carried out aimed at identifying the availability of other assets which will be subjected to seizure, until to the competition of unfair profit.