Closes with 16 indictments, three acquittals and a declaration of prescriptionand it was nine in the evening passed when the Apulian Gup read the sentence after a judicial marathon that began in the morning, the maxi preliminary hearing for the investigation into the environmental disaster of the Mazzarrà S. Andrea landfill, in the Zuppà district.
A procedure that involved 20 defendants – 19 people and the Tyrrhenamiente Management Company -, among those who, public and technical administrators, have dealt with somehow of the management of the great disposal structure, now definitively closed but a source of too many complex problems and above all of serious environmental pollution still today. And that in the past he also attracted, and perhaps still attracts them, the mafia interests of the Barcelonses and Mazzarroti.
Yesterday’s central figure is the almost integral acceptance of the request for indictment that was formulated by the substitute of the Peloritan DDA Francesca Bonanzinga. For the sixteen defendants sent to trial, the beginning of the trial is was set for next July 9th Always in Messina.
Among them are all the public and private figures, local and regional, which somehow had to deal with the landfill of Contrada Zuppà, in the various roles they have held over time between mayors, administrators and technicians: Giuseppe Antonio, Maurizio Bonasera, Roberto Campagna, Francesco Cannone, Salvatore Cocina, Maurizio Costa, Antonio Crisafulli, Antonia De Domenico, Calogero Foti, Sebastiano Giambò, Dario Grussu, Francesco Lo Cascio, Carmelo Navarra, Carmelo Pietrafitta, Alfio Raineri and Roberto Ravidà.
The range of contested crime hypotheses is wide in a very large time span, practically from the realization of the large waste disposal site to the present day, the last inspection of the PM technical consultant is in fact of 6 July 2023. The crimes of illegal management of waste, poisoning of water, environmental pollution and environmental disaster are contested concretely.
Instead “they come out” definitively from the procedural affair with the acquittal from all the accusations the three liquidators of the Tyrrhenatenus company who managed the landfill, or the former MEP Sonia Alfano, Pierluigi Biffi and the lawyer Francesco Cucinotta. As for their position, the Apulian gup therefore welcomed the defensive theorywhich was also reiterated yesterday morning by lawyers Fabio Repici, Sebastiano Campanella, Gabriele Cucinotta and Vito Pirrone: in a nutshell, also in light of the discipline provided for by the civil code, the article is 2489, the absolute extraneousness of the office in question to corporate events, which has no intervention capacity.
“He was infamous and unjustifiable – comments the lawyer Repici -, the accusation in Sonia Alfano of crimes in competition even with an external competitor of the mafia clan responsible for the murder of his father. The judge also certified it as unjust. “
«With the acquittal of the lawyer Francesco Cucinotta – comments the lawyer Sebastiano Campanella -, the gup said and sanctioned the non -existence of suitable powers for the figure of the liquidator in order to be able to fulfill the reclamation of the polluted site. Among other things, by the accounting reconstruction operated on the company it was ascertained that the same paid in a decrease with a debt exposure equal to € 88,221,644 and a negative equity of € 41,408,818. Moreover, the lawyer Cucinotta had put in place all the acts that included in his powers, always within the limits of the regulatory provisions referred to in art. 2489 cc, in order to avoid that any type of disaster would occur on the site of the Mazzarrà Sant’Andrea landfill. Ultimately justice is made ».
The last step the gup consumed it for the Tyrrheno -Ambiente company, who was attributed as a legal person, for which he declared the “not having to proceed as a prescription”.
On the civil parties the judge had already admitted almost all of them, including public bodies, associations and private citizens. Among others, the ministries of the environment and health were among others, the municipalities of Mazzarrà Sant’Andrea and Furnari, the WWF, Legambiente, the Codacons, and several citizens who live in the vicinity of the real “ecological bomb” which is the website of Contrada Zuppà. For all of them, it will talk about it at the end of the process, at this stage there was only discussion of their admission.
