Mafia Dominates Garbage Industry

An estimated 158 families in organized crime rings in Italy are getting rich off the trafficking of 35 million tons of garbage a year.

MILAN - Traditional areas of business apparently came up short for the Italian mafia, which is diversifying into a new and promising field: trafficking in toxic waste that poses a threat to residents' health and the environment, moving 2.6 billion dollars a year.

Italy produces 80 million tons of waste a year – both ordinary trash and toxic waste -- of which 35 million tons are handled by criminal organizations, like "cosa nostra" of Sicily, "La 'ndreghetta reggina" of Calabria, "sacra corona" of Puglia or the "camorra" in Naples, which deal with waste collection, elimination and recycling.

"It's a complex problem. It is too costly for industries to treat their waste, so they accept the offers of the trafficking companies, which charge 400 times less than the others," said Stefano Di Franco, chief of Rome's Forestry Corps, a police unit specializing in environmental protection.

The mafia, which emerged in Italy in the 19th century, manages 78 billion dollars a year, a flow that comes from extortion, smuggling and drug trafficking. But it also controls prostitution, clandestine immigration, and trafficking of human organs, weapons and animals, according to the study "Crime and Money", published in 2002 by the Bocconi University of Milan.

Its "sporco" (dirty) money is laundered through the financial system, real estate -- where it dominates 60 percent of public bidding --, commerce and industry.

Organized crime has a small army working for it: 1,500 chiefs or "padrinos", some 100,000 permanent members, and 400,000 "hired" part-time criminals.

And toxic waste is a business on the upswing.

This year, the Forestry Corps discovered in the southern city of Sicily that the petrochemical company Enichem di Priolo was dumping waste with mercury concentrations 20,000 times greater than the legal limit into the Mediterranean Sea. Police arrested 18 people, 16 of who were in the firm's employ. One turned out to be the provincial official responsible for keeping an eye on Enichem.

The company is part of the Italian Hydrocarbons Institute (ENI), already known to be involved in infringements of environmental laws.

In 1998, 30,000 tons of zinc manufacturing waste from an ENI group chemical company were buried at two sites in Calabria, while in other areas it was used in paving rural roads.

The "eco-mafia", made up of 158 families, uses several approaches to get rid of metal industry waste, toxic dust from steelworking, and transformers with dangerous refrigerants like PCBs, among others.

The traffickers falsify certificates so that their dangerous loads are recorded as household waste, and they alter transport permits to carry the toxic materials from one region to another and dump them at construction quarries, protected park areas, rivers, ravines, farms and into the sea.

"This is not treated waste, nor is dumping controlled. It is simply placed in holes and covered with soil and rocks. It seeps into underground reservoirs and later emerge ones way or another. The deadly cycle ends when we use that contaminated water to drink or to irrigate fields of fruits and vegetables, which we then eat," Stefano Ciafani, of Italy's largest environmental organization, Legambiente, told Tierramérica.

In Caserta, in Naples, where the "camorra" mafia dominates the toxic waste market, a 400-percent rise in cancer has been recorded over the past five years, according to a Public Health Ministry report.

In that region, the mafia gets rid of the waste by mixing it with the cement used in building homes and with asphalt for paving streets.

Last year, the police operation "Terra Verdi" found that millions of tons of toxic waste from industries in northern Italy had been shipped to central and southern regions by simulating waste treatment operations, camouflaging the loads as fertilizer, and forging transport permits.

In exchange for pay, 14 farmers agreed to have the loads dumped on their land, where they raise dairy cattle.

Although waste trafficking has a long history, it only came to light in 1990 when some "repentant" mafiosos confessed.

At the time, the criminal rings acted with impunity because the existing laws did not address such crimes.

"What is happening in Italy doesn't happen anywhere else. The mafia organizations are typically Italian, and the law does not punish them effectively. Before April 2001, these traffickers were risking less than someone who steals an apple. They were merely slapped with fines," said Ciafani.

In April 2001 a new law entered into force, categorizing toxic waste trafficking as a crime, and establishing sentences of one to eight years in prison. Legambiente helped sponsor the bill.

The Forestry Corps and the Finance Guard then launched investigations that uncovered at least part of the racket.

For example, in Murgia, in southern Italy, four hectares were found to hold waste from the northern furrier industry, steel industry waste from Lombardia and Veneto, both in the north, and shredded tires from Campania, in the south. The soil was contaminated with dangerous metals like chromium, nickel and lead.

According to the National Waste Observatory, 11.6 million tons of toxic garbage disappeared in 2001 in Italy.

The mafia does not act alone, but benefits from the complicity of many public officials.

For months, the dangerous waste of Busto Arsizi municipality, in Lombardia, was stored alongside conventional garbage from 27 towns in the region, and nobody noticed.

In December 2002, the police discovered a clandestine business engaged in waste collection, transport and elimination, in which six municipal officials and two local business executives were involved.

"The mafia hooks up with whoever happens to be in power at the municipal, provincial and regional level. This occurs in all of the world's criminal organizations. But today we are fighting the phenomenon and we are the only country with a parliamentary commission investigating toxic waste trafficking," said Paulo Russo, the chair of the commission.

"This is not just an Italian problem. It is also a problem of the industrialized countries that dump their waste in poor countries," he said in comments to Tierramérica.

* Francesca Colombo is a Tierramérica contributor.