Organized illicit waste trafficking in Bagheria. The Carabinieri of the Company of the municipality of Palermo have carried out five precautionary measures, issued by the Judge for Preliminary Investigations of the Court of Palermo at the request of the District Anti-Mafia Directorate, for the purpose of a complex investigative activity which has highlighted an organization dedicated to illegal disposal of non-hazardous special waste.
In-depth investigations and use of technical instruments
The provision is the result of meticulous activity by the Operational Section of Bagheria, which took place between December 2022 and February 2023. The traditional investigations were integrated with the use of sophisticated technical instruments, allowing us to outline the operations of a company which, although declaring itself dedicated exclusively to construction and the transport of non-hazardous special waste, it managed an illegal landfill. Inert materials from buildings coming from construction sites in Bagheria and neighboring municipalities were collected, transported and buried on the land owned by the company. In just two months of monitoring, at least 280 discharges of scabbricides were documented, with an average of seven per day. Overall, approximately 1,400 tons of inert material were illegally disposed of.
Illicit profits and environmental damage
The company required between 70 and 100 euros for each load disposed of, making a monthly profit of around 15,000 euros. This system allowed the company not only to reduce disposal costs, but also to obtain illicit profits and to allow entrepreneurs who turned to it to increase their profits and pay less taxes, thanks to the absence of traceability of the illegally disposed of waste.
Agricultural land transformed into landfills
Investigations revealed that the suspects deliberately transformed the agricultural land they owned into illegal landfills. The waste burial activity was carried out using trucks and mechanical shovels, with the construction of internal roads to facilitate heavy vehicle traffic. The land, used as olive groves and planted with other trees, actually masked waste hidden with topsoil. Particularly worrying were the episodes of waste destruction by fire. The company’s activity was completely illegal, without authorizations, and not registered in the waste register. Furthermore, the operational area was subjected to landscape and seismic restrictions, and was affected by a state of instability, but this did not stop the illicit activity.
Precautionary measures and seizures
The operation led to the execution of:
- 2 house arrest orders for the company managers;
- 3 obligations to report to the Judicial Police for drivers of heavy vehicles and company employees;
- the preventive seizure of approximately 10,000 m2 of land, 7 trucks and 2 mini excavators.
Ties with organized crime
The land and heavy vehicles had already been under asset seizure since December 2022, as they were attributable to Nicolò Testa, a well-known mafia affiliate who died last November. The property investigations coordinated by the Public Prosecutor’s Office demonstrated that the assets available to Testa and his heirs were the result of illicit activities. The Court of Palermo therefore issued a confiscation order carried out this morning by the Carabinieri of the Investigative Unit, concerning assets with an estimated value of approximately 800,000 euros, including a construction company and three plots of land.
