Dyed In The Wool - Dyed In The Wool

Rifiuti, la contro-inchiesta/3

Dear Editor,

in recent months, has rightly found space in local newspapers and Naples, in some cases, even the national press, the news opening cooperation with the justice of Gaetano Vassallo, a former environment minister of the Casalesi clan. This collaboration has enabled the initiation of major investigations against ecomafia Caserta and uncovered that the unclean worms in which every sort of wheeler-go hand in hand with local authorities and criminals to sully our territory. There is one particular, however, that unfortunately is not stressed enough about the criminal organizations that deal with waste. And that is the difficulties that the investigative bodies and the judiciary are faced with when they come across a very interesting investigative strand, either for lack of adequate legislation, for want of a substantial condition isolation from the other actors on stage (politics, business, high bureaucracy). Take the case of
Vassallo, for example. The white-collar clan has indicated the places where the cutthroat Caserta have spilled thousands of tonnes of waste, made the names of his accomplices, has denounced his ten brothers, guilty - like him - to have poisoned many acres of countryside, has brought up the former Secretary Nicola Cosentino in the business, indicated as a leader of the clique that, through policy and the Camorra, makes money with the garbage, said (and this is good to remember Roberto Saviano) as even mice die near the sites of illegal spills, raised the veil on the riches accumulated by the waste holding spa, something like forty million euro. All this said, Vassallo, in his interrogations between 2008 and 2009, raising a unanimous chorus of outrage and disbelief among the public locally and nationally. Vassallo possible that he knew all this? Possible that all this happening in Campania? Possible that no one has noticed first?
Yet, Gaetano Vassallo is not a new name for those involved in judicial investigations and not have been so even for those who, for at least twenty years, have left him free to graze up and down Caserta to sow death and disease.
know a lot about him. It was long overdue. In June 1992, Vassallo is arrested in an investigation on drug traffickers and arms. Talking about the Vassallo pm, at the time, it is a turncoat who accused him of having links with some sick mayors of Casertano, confirmed reports from some wiretaps to prove it on very good terms with local politicians. A year later, and we are in 1993, the maxi-inquiry Adelphi opened a gash on the business of illegal dumping. And who ends up right in law 4 thousand pages of information for police? Just Gaetano Vassallo, pointed out - even then - as a link between politics and organized crime. Three years later, Vassallo was sentenced to two years and seven months in prison, compared to a request seven-year advanced by the prosecutor. Obviously, the classroom out of court, the Minister of Environment Casalesi back in play, and it will take another fifteen years to be cornered, and he dismantled the infernal system set up behind the screen of the management A landfill in Cesa, a hinterland town of Caserta, where the same Vassallo was for a long time alderman.
What does this mean? Intuition that the investigation had been right, and long, and - perhaps, perhaps - could save the tormented Ontario (in) felix a decade passes and poisoning, and that it would not hurt to hear the appeal that the national anti-Mafia prosecutor, Piero Grasso, has rivolto al mondo della politica: prevedere il reato associativo ambientale. Una richiesta che il capo dei pm antimafia italiani ha esplicitato, ufficialmente, il 17 giugno 2009 nel corso di un'audizione davanti alla Commissione d'inchiesta sul ciclo rifiuti, e che prevede di far rientrare il traffico di rifiuti nella competenza della Direzione distrettuale antimafia una modifica dell'articolo 51, comma 3bis, del Codice di procedura penale. Si tratta di una modifica capace di attribuire ai pm antimafia la competenza sui reati connessi al ciclo dei rifiuti, mentre gli altri reati resterebbero attribuiti alle singole procure. In questo modo, si consentirebbe anche di recuperare alle indagini l'uso delle intercettazioni telefoniche in materia, che non sempre è possibile use if you are unable to demonstrate traceability of trafficking to organized crime. E - experience shows - that almost never run the Camorra in person as big a deal, on which too many have made personal fortunes still invisible.
(Published in "Time", November 26, 2010)

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Rifiuti, la contro-inchiesta/2

Dear Editor,

the question of waste in Campania, and on this we can not agree with Roberto Saviano, is not an emergency, but - unfortunately - a condition of (a) normal, which has dragged in accordance with the common clichés, which draws on the same Saviano to give strength to his narrative, at least sixteen years since that law was enacted for a state of alarm.
In fact, without resorting to the belly of Naples Matilde evening or late nineteenth-century tales about Naples humiliated by cholera and dirt, enough to dwell on the few sentences below to understand how the problem of sanitation in our cities, is far from recent history. Flash nr1: "Failure to return the bags for garbage collection is causing considerable discomfort among citizens. Many residents are forced to throw garbage on the streets, wrapped in paper. And this is a grave danger to public health. This morning, some streets in the Chiaia district - the most famous and elegant the city - appeared smeared with heaps of garbage in every corner. "
Flash nr 2: "Tons of solid waste were dumped in the streets, after the abstention from work of employees all'autoparco Via Gianturco. Failure to exit the truck, last night, this morning has caused serious hardship to the inhabitants of the old town, those of the northern and eastern part of the city. A Secondigliano, Marianella at the heaps of waste has reached in some cases, the meters in height. The fleet of Via Gianturco has over 100 trucks that make the collection service over a large area [...] in the evening increased the hardships because - also on the Feast of Saint Anthony, patron saint of animals - has been set on fire a number of garbage containers on city streets and peripherals. The flames, which in some cases have reached a considerable height, caused danger. In a street in the suburb, the fire department have been thwarted in their work by groups of hooligans who have stoned, damaging them, some trucks. The police arrested some people, who then released. For the situation created in the city for the tons of solid waste on the roads in many telephoned to newspapers and other print media and television stations, asking, like the traffic, the intervention the prefect. "
And, finally, flash No. 3: "Even today the removal of waste in Naples has been slow due to the high number of vehicles, about two hundred, still for mechanical failures. Containers, placed in the streets of Naples, are still mostly full of junk. "
looks like the description of the city today, or a week ago. At most, it might seem like the description of the city sixteen years ago, when it exploded the garbage emergency in Naples. In fact, there are three excerpts from many articles, published by the Neapolitan daily, on 19 February 1981, January 17, 1982 and March 4, 1984. Guess, at least thirty years ago. Yesterday as Today, nothing has changed. So what does this mean? That the affair has ancient roots and deep waste, of which the Camorra is only one aspect deteriorating and certainly among the most dangerous. Campania
If we cover up of garbage and shame, before the whole world, it is because those who had to check, who should plan, those who had to manage, those who had to ensure the functionality of the mechanisms has not done so. For willful misconduct, or gross. Then came the Camorra. Then, organized crime has taken over, in the sinuous and insinuating sinful aspects of the bureaucracy and public administration that, with the Beast, fell to terms. But if it stands, clearly, the political responsibility of the Camorra thugs, then you do not go away. Or you could, at best, to confusion, though in good faith.
Sure, it's good to talk Saviano dell'ecomafia Caserta front of millions of viewers and the splendid reportage "la Repubblica and L'Espresso", but the fusion between historical truth and literary fascination and judicial, in a matter so delicate, with all the implications of public order and safety arising from the risk of generating imaginative atmosphere which have no grip with reality. I think, for example, when the writer cites - and does so with some frequency - the legend that would the carcass of a whale buried in the dump in Pianura, a suburb of Naples. The tone he uses Saviano are very impressive and seems to see this new Captain Ahab in a filthy dive of the port, contact Camorra and fixer so that they will go away that mountain of fat and rotting flesh, entangled in a fishing net who sway - rocked by the oil - off the Gulf of Naples. Why, one wonders at the end of the story, even in Naples whales end up in landfills? And if you end Moby Dick imagine what else hides the stomach of mother nature, in those areas ...
The case - in hindsight - is a bit 'less imaginative, but not the less dramatic as Saviano says: There really is a whale in the Pianura dump. It is not a legend or a story passed from mouth to mouth among the inhabitants of the neighborhood, as was done among the Indians of America. The whale - 7 meters long and weighing eight tons, run aground off the island of Ischia - is buried at the site because the operation license for the former city councilor of Health, Giuseppe Scalera. The municipal ordinance is July 17, 1989. And, at that time, this solution is the shared City, Region and Prefecture.
The question, then, is not: there is really a whale at the landfill? But, because there's a whale in the landfill?
(Published in "Time", November 25, 2010)

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Rifiuti, contro-inchiesta/1

Dear Editor,

the last episode of the show "Come away with me" and, in particular, the long monologue by Roberto Saviano on the waste in Campania can be summarized according to this simple scheme: Naples is suffocating in the garbage because the landfill has been saturated by the clans, which have filled with trash in the North. In support of this thesis, which actually seems much more an axiom, Saviano rattles off ten investigations by the prosecution that, from 1993 to 2009, demonstrated the responsibility of the industrial North in the environmental crisis, every other month, raging in our latitudes. Investigations known to those who make my job, of which the newspapers have been dealing with time and they do not say anything new. Investigations that in some cases (see Cassiopeia, which began in 1999 and 2010 still stuck at the preliminary hearing) are still in progress, or - even - have been downgraded in the plant accusatory.
The narrative television Saviano is very similar to what Umberto Eco describes in his wonderful "The Cemetery of Prague: just take a little 'shady and mysterious characters and have them gathering in a dark place and this is a plot useful for any emergency requirement. The Conspiracy
described by Saviano is a triangle formed by Masons, entrepreneurs (possibly North) and the Camorra. Unfortunately, the story is not so simple. And, perhaps more than any of the information help you to complete that part of history that Saviano had no way to tell on Monday night.
It is true that large companies in the North have often used the Campania as garbage, but maybe - for the sake of truth and not to leave an alibi to the indecent ruling class that ruled over the past twenty years - would be worth remembering that there is also ecomafia another circuit that was created and developed entirely within the borders of Campania. Evidence? Here they are: 21 February 1996, police discovered that the area of \u200b\u200bAcerra were spilled tons of resins and other waste toxic from businesses in the province of Naples. On November 4, 2005, the police realize that in the countryside and the coastal agro-Aversa Domitian were buried hazardous waste from the treatment plants of Capri and the Sorrento peninsula, as well as sites of Salerno and Acerra. On 11 May 2006, the prosecutor in Benevento investigates 50 thousand tons of hazardous waste from the provinces of Avellino and Salerno, disposed in the countryside and rivers of Sannio. July 4 replicates of the same year, with a blitz of Noe police in Caserta, where four companies were hiding underground sludge of purification plants of Licola, Orta Atella, and Marcianise Mercato San Severino. And again on 11 September 2007 the judiciary runs into a traffic of waste material is inert substances and asbestos and bituminous products in the Naples, "hidden" in the yards of the Table In all these operations, the North has nothing to do. Why not talk about it? Even these people are criminals and they also helped to poison our land. Indeed, not only ours, because - again sifting through investigations of the last ten years - clearly another fact emerges, of which there was no mention to "Come away with me" from Campania are also lots dozens, hundreds of trucks loads of hazardous waste to be hidden in the bellies of other regions, near and far. Here's a bit ' examples: in Abruzzo, between 1992 and 1998, 34 people are reported to illegal and Napoletano waste from Caserta, in Puglia, on the contrary, in the blitz of May 13, 2002, suspects, there are two dozen. It's not all: 23 March 2006, the preliminary hearing judge in Milan sentenced eight people for illegal trafficking of waste from Campania and Puglia, with pit stops in Lombardy and Emilia Romagna. Also from Naples, is the investigation of the March 10, 2007 to say, the source of the toxic waste that were illegally sold and disposed of three companies of Brescia and Udine. And other 100 thousand tons of garbage from Campania are made to swallow the countryside of the Marches (inquiry "Web" of July 17, 2007, 21 suspects at large free). These are also news.
Another detail: in the north there are also illegal dumping of toxic and harmful waste. He says, in 1995, the second report on Legambiente ecomafie: pestilential buboes are found in Piedmont (Cirie, and Piossasco Tortona) and Lombardy (Dred and Lacchiarella).
say it's all the fault of the North in cahoots with the mafia does not help to understand the dimensions of the phenomenon, why then - finally - the various Bassolino and Iervolino (Bertolaso \u200b\u200bleft in this "meritorious" image, when he found himself alone in the 2007 to face a wave of garbage in Campania: "No one helped me, Bassolino and Iervolino had marched and I was only due interlocutori: il cardinale Sepe e la Procura”) sono autorizzati a sostenere di non aver avuto alcuna colpa, in tutta questa schifezza.
Certo, non è colpa della camorra se la differenziata non decolla, non è colpa dei clan se il Commissariato per l'emergenza rifiuti ha bruciato due miliardi di euro, senza risolvere nulla. Forse, parlando di rifiuti, più che incolpare Sandokan o i Casalesi (che pure hanno le loro colpe, per carità...) sarebbe più utile fare riferimento alle parcelle d'oro e ai milioni a palate che sono stati distribuiti dal Commissariato per consulenze e incarichi esterni, come il super-stipendio da 413 euro al giorno corrisposto a un ragioniere non iscritto all'Albo.
Forse, sarebbe il caso to remember that the prosecutor of Naples, Giovandomenico Lepore, 16 November, before the parliamentary committee of inquiry into the eco-mafia said, about the emergence of recent weeks: "In this case it is not the Camorra, is an inefficient cycle management of waste that has lasted twenty years. "
Perhaps it would be appropriate to name a few, and especially any surname.
(Published in "Time", November 23, 2010)

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Antonio Iovine, in trappola il boss dei boss

E 'smile - bitter - the defeat what the mafia boss Antonio Iovine, shows off the exit of the police headquarters in Naples, surrounded by police and dozens of photographers and cameramen, one hour soon after capture, which occurred in a house of Casal di Principe, near Caserta. Iovine - nicknamed 'or no one, "the infant" because from a very young age for reasons unfathomable to the succession of a mafia "families" of the most feared criminal Italian landscape - has surrendered to investigators as a true chieftain, after he tried to escape from a balcony. Agents who surrounded him, confirmed their personal details and asked not want to waste time to show them the documents. "It's me, it is useless to ask me," he told police. With him ended up in handcuffs for aiding and also un incensurato, Marco Borrata, che ne avrebbe curato la latitanza, ospitandolo nella sua abitazione.
Condannato all'ergastolo nel maxiprocesso Spartacus, Iovine è considerato la mente finanziaria dei Casalesi, il boss-imprenditore, capace di movimentare e di gestire affari da decine e decine di milioni di euro all'anno, in collaborazione con l'altro superlatitante casertano, Michele Zagaria, con cui fu protagonista di un clamoroso episodio finito agli atti di un'inchiesta antimafia. I due boss telefonarono infatti a un giornalista di un quotidiano locale per chiedergli di smentire alcune notizie di cronaca nera a loro dire calunniose.
Originario di San Cipriano d'Aversa – uno dei tre paesi, insieme a Casapesenna e Casal di Principe, appunto, dove secondo la leggenda bisogna essere nati per aspirare al ruolo di boss dei boss della camorra casertana -, Antonio Iovine era ricercato da oltre quattordici anni ed era inserito nell'elenco dei trenta latitanti più pericolosi d'Italia, al pari di Matteo Messina Denaro e dei grandi capi della 'Ndrangheta calabrese.
Il suo ruolo di stratega economico-finanziario della cosca è stato ricostruito dalle inchieste condotte dalla magistratura napoletana e dal pool anti-casalesi guidato dal procuratore aggiunto Federico Cafiero De Raho. Un lavoro inquirente fatto in silenzio e con grande professionalità, che a poco a poco ha indebolito il sistema di protezioni e connivenze di cui il malavitoso si era circondato. L'ultima sciabolata è stata inferta May 26, 2008, with a maxi-blitz that dismantled the network of port-orders of the boss, which was also involved his wife, Henrietta Avallone. In the home of Iovine, the investigators found furs, luxury furniture, watches and jewelry with a value that was not possible to seize it, however, each was accompanied by a greetings card to indicate their lawful 'origin'. They were gifts from friends and acquaintances to "'or no one."
On the mode of capture, has expressed the prosecutor's office, Giovandomenico Lepore, noting during a press conference at the coverage offered by locals Iovine, while the head of the squad, Vittorio Pisani, explained that much of the investigative work is based on stalking and eavesdropping and telephone. For the national anti-Mafia prosecutor, Piero Grasso, "Iovine's prestige has fallen and now the organization loses its credibility."
The news of the godfather, came on the day of controversy at a distance between Roberto Saviano and Interior Minister Maroni on the writer's statements about the relations between the Northern League and the 'Ndrangheta in transit "Come away with me," is also been greeted with unanimous political world by words of great appreciation for the work of law enforcement and the judiciary. For the holder of the Interior Ministry, it "is a beautiful day for the fight against the Mafia, "while the chairman of the Senate and the House have sought to dwell on its achievements in the fight against organized crime. "Again, this further suggests that the State's capture and that the institutions are united in the fight against crime," said Renato Schifani, and Gianfranco Fini said that "the fight against organized crime is a primary goal seek, without never let our guard down. "
The Keeper, Angelino Alfano, has instead announced its readiness, immediately, to sign the request for harsh prison regime against the head of the Camorra, "A further confirmation - added Minister of Justice - that the team wins and the State Anti-Mafia played beats the spoken. "
(Published in "Il Sole 24 Ore" dated 18 November 2010)