There are around sixty requests from civil parties in the Keu trial, today at its first hearing, and among these also the Le Rose company and Legambiente Toscana, to which the Florence prosecutor’s office attributes responsibility as well as a connection with the ‘Ndrangheta gangs.
The Le Rose company also asked to join as a civil party together with around sixty individuals and entities at the preliminary hearing for the investigation into the keu, the tanning waste waste from Santa Croce sull’Arno, entrusted to companies reputedly linked to the gangs of the ‘ndrangheta, like Le Rose according to the prosecutor’s office, and ended up under the regional road 429 and in other construction sites in Tuscany. The preliminary hearing judge Gianluca Mancuso will decide at the next hearing on 7 June whether to admit the alleged offended and damaged parties who intend to request compensation for damages to the trial. The Le Rose company is also among the six companies to which the Florence prosecutor’s office contests administrative liability based on crime for actions committed by the directors. Today the judicial administrator of Le Rose, who took over from the old management, decided to bring civil action.
Legambiente Toscana is moving in the same way, having asked to be a civil party at the preliminary hearing for the Keu investigation, coordinated by the Florence anti-mafia prosecutor’s office. Environmental pollution, trafficking of dangerous waste and criminal association aggravated by mafia facilitation: these are some of the crimes contested by the prosecutor’s office which requested the indictment of 24 people and 6 companies. “Today a process of fundamental importance for our region begins – declared Fausto Ferruzza, president of Legambiente Toscana – because obtaining truth and justice on one of the most serious cases of environmental pollution in our recent history is a statutory objective of priority rank for our association. We also hope that we can proceed in the quickest and most effective way possible with the removal of pollutants (and therefore with the remediation) of all 13 sites affected by the illicit disposal”. The investigations, carried out by the regional Carabinieri Forestale command of Tuscany together with the ecological operational unit of Florence, have led to the hypothesis of an illicit mechanism of trafficking and disposal of waste resulting from leather tanning, coming from the leather district of Santa Croce sull’Arno . These residues, called Keu (i.e. “ash deriving from the drying of tanning sludge”), according to the accusation, not adequately reclaimed and therefore highly polluting, would have been used in large public contracts with a real danger of contamination of the soil and groundwater . This is approximately 8 thousand tonnes (containing chromium 3) destined as aggregates in the filling of new infrastructures (for example the fifth lot of the Sr 429 Empolese-Valdelsa). Not only that: these wastes, according to the prosecutor’s office, would also have been destined for other construction sites or sites such as that of the military airport of Pisa (later reclaimed), in an environmental recovery land in Massarosa, in the Green Park area in Pontedera and in the Provincial road 26, in the municipal area of Montaione.
