“The Rivas and their cronies have put in place illegal management methods even by failing to adapt the iron and steel plant to the minimum environmental and safety systems to remedy the problems of which they had been fully aware since 1995“. 17 months after the sentence of the Court of Assizes of Taranto for the “Ambiente Solduto” trial relating to the crime of environmental disaster caused by the steel factory and charged to the management of the Riva group, the reasons for the sentence arrived on 29 November which at the end of May 2021 imposed heavy sentences on many of the 47 defendants, including 44 natural persons and 3 companies. Motivations contained in almost 3,800 pages and in line with the sentence which, among others, saw the sentence of the former owners and directors of the group Fabio and Nicola Riva respectively to 22 years and 20 years, the former plant manager Luigi Capogrosso to 21 years, Girolamo Archinà, contact person for institutional and political relations of the company, at 21 years and 6 months, Nichi Vendola, former governor of the Puglia Region, at 3 years and 6 months.
The knots to solve now in the company
The filing of the reasons intersects with a particular moment for the former Ilva. Which after the seizure of July 2012, from which the trial in Assizes and the convictions resulted, was first commissioned by the Government by removing the Rivas from ownership and management (June 2013), then it was sold under rent to ArcelorMittal (November 2017) to finally move (April 2021) to the new company Acciaierie d’Italia where the private Mittal (majority) and the public Invitalia (minority) coexist. And precisely the current coexistence between private and public is the knot to untie, with the Minister of Enterprise, Adolfo Urso, who has raised the need to rebalance the governance of society. After the suspension of 145 related companies by Acciaierie d’Italia, Urso – who has repeatedly invited the company to withdraw from the decision taken – said that in the former Ilva “the State has put a lot of money into it, it will add another 2 billion, but we have a duty to know how these resources will actually be spent to recover the decline”. The two billion cited by the minister are respectively in the Aiuti Bis and Ter decrees and the former are used for capital operations and capital strengthening of the company and the latter for the construction of the plant for the production of the pre-reduced iron which will have to be used in the plants reducing the charge of coke and ore. Urso also touched on the production condition of the factory which will close in 2022 at about 3 million tons when the top management had repeatedly declared that 5.7 million tons would be produced in the year, 300 thousand less than those 6 million tons which are the level authorized for now and never reached. “Today – said the minister – the production of the former Ilva, Acciaierie d’Italia, is not in a position to be able to support a plant and a production like the one that Italy deserves”.
Plants in Taranto seized and confiscated
Among the critical aspects to be addressed in the context of the governance reorganization, there is the double condition in which the plants find themselves: seized by the investigating judge (albeit with the faculty of use) and confiscated by the Corte d’Assise (even if the confiscation will become enforceable only if confirmed by the judgment in the Court of Cassation). Precisely on the confiscation, the Court of Assizes in the reasons for the trial wrote that “the situation that emerged from the hearing – updated at the time of the final decision – highlights the failure to implement the environmental plan, so that the danger of further negative consequences must be considered concrete and present in terms of the environment and health”. “At the time of the final decision – writes the Court in the reasons – only a part of the prescriptions suitable for eliminating the dangerous situations had been implemented, with the consequence that the release from seizure of the hot area would cause very serious consequences due to the significant risks that the plant still had”. Furthermore, according to the Court, “the works concerning the environmental plan, which have not yet been carried out, pertain to very important interventions relating to areas of the plant which, according to the examination of the experts during the probative incident, were found to be the most polluting”. The Court then cited some plants where the rehabilitation works must be completed and with regard to the steel agglomeration, where minerals are prepared for loading the blast furnaces, it observed that the lines of the same agglomeration “derive the dioxin emissions which caused and continue to cause incalculable damage to the health of workers”.
“The Rivas endangered life and physical integrity”
On the past Riva management, the Court’s judgment was clear: the Rivas “have endangered – concretely – the life and physical integrity of the workers of the same plant, the life and physical integrity of the inhabitants of the Tamburi district, the life and the physical integrity of the citizens of Taranto”. “Damage to life and physical integrity – argued the Court of Assizes in the reasons – which unfortunately in many cases have materialized: from manslaughter to internal and external mortality due to tumors, to the presence of dioxins in mother’s milk”. Finally, wrote the Court, “Ilva’s ability to influence the institutions, by leveraging the economic and contractual power of large companies, made it very difficult for a long time to ascertain the crimes that were being perpetrated”.
Urso: we are on a train that is derailing
And Minister Urso returned to Ilva on 29 November speaking on “Porta a porta”. “We get on a running train that is derailing, a train where the station master and train conductor do not respond – he said -. In contravention of the agreements made, it produces three million tons. It should have produced six. We are already with a system that is shutting down. We met with everyone, starting with the CEO”. “No one – underlined Urso – tells me that it is closing but suddenly, from one day to the next, the news arrives that it is closing the gates to related workers. But we continued the dialogue with the company because we are responsible people. We want that billion to be conditional on governance. Now the state does not exist”.