The Carabinieri of the Bagheria company carried out 5 precautionary measures, issued by the Palermo investigating judge, at the request of the DDA, against as many suspects accused of organized illicit waste trafficking. The two managers of the company were placed under house arrest. For three drivers of heavy vehicles employed by the company the obligation to report to the judicial police.
The preventive seizure of approximately 10,000 m2 of company land, 7 trucks and 2 mini excavators was ordered. The investigations of the operational section began in 2022 and ended in February 2023 and shed light on a company that should have dealt exclusively with construction and the transport of non-hazardous special waste produced by third parties, but which instead on the land it owned had constituted a real illegal landfill for the organized carrying out of a usual activity of collection, transport and concealment by burying rubbish removers, i.e. inert construction materials coming from active construction sites in Bagheria and neighboring municipalities. In just 2 months of monitoring, at least 280 discharges of chemical waste were documented, with an average of 7 per day carried out 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 costs of the company and to obtain profits that would otherwise not have been achievable, but also allowed the various entrepreneurs who turned to the company in question to increase their earnings and pay fewer taxes by disposing of their waste in illegal way, because it is not traceable. The activity of the Carabinieri through observation, control and shadowing services has demonstrated how by burying the rubble bombs, the suspects would have wreaked havoc on the agricultural land they owned, transforming it into real landfills. The waste was covered with topsoil and then saplings were planted on top. Particularly alarming were the episodes in which waste was destroyed by fire, after having been piled up by the drivers of the vehicles. The company’s activity is illegal and without 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 restrictions, as well as being affected by a state of instability.
The lands and heavy vehicles used, following a proposal from the Palermo Investigative Unit, were already under asset seizure, issued in December 2022 by the Court of Palermo, because they fell within the availability of Nicolò Testa, already convicted of mafia association and who died last 7 November.
The evidentiary framework collected as part of the property investigations, coordinated by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, was able to demonstrate how the assets available, first to Nicolò Testa himself and subsequently to his heirs, were in reality the fruit of his illicit activities, thus 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 company, operating in the construction sector, with related set of corporate assets; 3 plots of land.
