Gangmaster in Barcelona, this is how the child prodigy Marchetta managed Sikelia Oil: "If you don't like it, you're free to leave"

Marchetta and Biondo’s Sikelia Oil srl was a company that was doing well with the management of the large service station in via Sicilia, in Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto, built from scratch. They had also built the motel for truckers in transit who wanted to rest for a night and then leave again. Except that, just to name one of the contested accusations, the workers who worked for 8 hours instead paid them for 6 hours and 40 hours, they did not pay the increases foreseen by the contract for holidays, or they skipped the payments of 13th and 14th wages, and if they did so “… after having regularly paid them they asked for partial or full repayment”.

The two partners and owners of Sikelia Oil srl were the 56-year-old Maurizio Sebastiano Marchetta and the entrepreneur Salvatore Biondo, also 56 years old. The 9 “pump workers” responsible for fuel distribution and other tasks at the service station have now ended up in trouble after an investigation by the Finance Department managed by Barcelona’s chief prosecutor Giuseppe Verzera, on charges of gangmastering and exploitation of employees. An investigation which, after the courageous complaint of one of the employees, also continued with telephone and environmental interceptions. Sums of money were also seized from current accounts in the company’s name, up to an amount of over 352 thousand euros.

Marchetta and Biondo have both been under house arrest since yesterday, the precautionary custody order was signed by the Barcelona investigating judge Giuseppe Caristia, who accepted the requests of the Prosecutor’s Office. The accusation hypothesis is that provided for by the art. 603 bis of the Criminal Code, the so-called “Illicit intermediation and exploitation of labour”, commonly known as “Corporation”. They will be questioned as soon as possible by the investigating judge on these facts, they are assisted respectively by the lawyers Ugo Colonna and Nino Aloisio.

Marchetta is, so to speak, an old acquaintance of the Barcelona news. He went from being the child prodigy of the Barcelona right, complete with the seat of vice president in the An share of the city council and a member of the Longano Freemasonry, to declaring and then collaborating with the anti-mafia operation “Sistema”. He said that he would have been forced to suffer the burning of mechanical vehicles and some extortion demands. But precisely in that trial which saw the bosses Carmelo D’Amico and Carmelo Lavorano in the dock, accused by him and then acquitted on appeal, his credibility completely collapsed.

In the reasons for that sentence («a different reality from that presented by the Marchettas»), the judges wrote of «consistent level of non-credibility» and «lack of reliability» for his declarations. Cambiano – the judges always wrote -, argued “… the impossibility for anyone to subject Marchetta Maurizio Sebastiano to extortion, given that he was notoriously a trusted friend and even business partner of Salvatore Di Salvo”; or that «… Maurizio Marchetta, in short, represented the clean face to present to public offices, politics, etc….». That Salvatore “Sem” Di Salvo who for many years was the “regent” of the Barcelona mafia group, succeeding Giuseppe Gullotti.

Here is what investigating judge Caristia writes about the gangmaster affair. For example, the fact that clearly emerges from the documents is how both suspects, in their capacity as administrators by law and in fact of the company Sikelia Oil srl, in an almost constant manner, managed the employment relationship of the employees in such a way as to place the latter in conditions of inhumane exploitation, despite their state of need and their precarious economic conditions. Because they have imposed unspecified and arbitrary deductions from their wages on workers, they have deprived them of additional monthly payments and, above all, they have systematically paid them a salary far lower than the amount of work actually performed without recognition of any increase for overtime, night, holiday and Sunday work.

And when someone protested, the words of the two to the employees were always the same: «If you like it, that’s how it is. If you don’t like it, you are free to leave.”