The soldiers coordinated by the Bari Forest Carabinieri Group, with the help of the Alta Murgia National Park Carabinieri Department and the Altamura CC Company, executed the preventive seizure decree issued by the GIP of the Court of Bari at the request of the local Prosecutor’s Office of the Republic, which ordered the seizure of a disused quarry and 7 trucks used for the illicit transport of the material.
The investigations, conducted by the CC Forestry Unit of Altamura, have made it possible to gather serious indications of guilt against nine individuals presumed responsible for the dumping and burial inside the quarry of over 8000 cubic meters of special, dangerous and non-dangerous waste, with the involvement of 4 companies. According to the accusatory approach accepted by the GIP, without prejudice to the evaluation in the subsequent phases with the contribution of the defense, systematic dumping of special waste would have been perpetrated in the abandoned quarry (more than 400 trips in less than a year using the heavy vehicles subject to seizure ), probably deriving from building demolition, as well as periodic concealment and burial of the same waste. The area subject to seizure, equal to approximately 9 hectares, is of particular environmental value, as it falls within the “Murgia Alta” Special Conservation Area, included in the “Natura 2000 Network”: the conduct carried out by today’s suspects would have caused a compromise and deterioration to a significant and measurable extent of the environmental matrices of the site, integrating a hypothesis of environmental pollution.
Serious indications of guilt have been found against nine people who appear to be under investigation in collaboration with each other for the crimes of environmental pollution, operation of illegal landfill, falsification of documents, illicit management and unauthorized mixing of waste. Furthermore, the companies involved were charged with the administrative offense resulting from the crime envisaged by Legislative Decree 231/2001 for legal persons, as the same crimes would have been committed in the interest of the entity with the intention of omitting the the adoption of the procedures, precautions and precautions prescribed to protect the environment with the aim of increasing company productivity, or bringing an advantage to the organization itself, due to the economic savings and greater profit obtained with such illicit conduct. It is important to underline that the proceeding is in the preliminary investigation phase and that, after the execution of the precautionary measure, the guarantee interrogation and the discussion with the defense of the suspects will follow, whose possible guilt, in relation to the crimes contested, must be ascertained during the trial in the cross-examination between the parties. The attention of the Carabinieri Forestry Departments in the province of Bari remains high in combating the multiple forms of illicit waste management, in order to protect the environment and the valuable Apulian territory.
