Carabinieri operation at the request of the DDA
June 18, 2024
Organized illicit trafficking of waste. With this accusation, the Carabinieri of Bagheria, in the metropolitan city of Palermo, 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. The provision is the result of a complex and meticulous activity carried out from December 2022 to February 2023. The investigation made it possible to outline the operations of a company that should have dealt exclusively with construction and the transport of non-hazardous special waste produced by third parties, but which instead had set up a real illegal landfill on the land it owned 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 particular, in just 2 months of monitoring, at least 280 discharges of factory cleaners 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 profits and pay fewer taxes by disposing of their waste in illegal way because it is not traceable.
