SALERNO – In the last ten years in Campania there have been 44,179 crimes against the environment, with 39,176 people reported and arrested and 12,580 kidnappings carried out. Most of the crimes are concentrated in the provinces of Naples (38 percent) and Salerno (28 percent). This is what emerges from the Ecomafie 2020 Report of Legambiente Campania. In 2019 there were 5,549 ascertained crimes of environmental illegality with an increase of 44 percent compared to 2018. To ‘share the cake’, together with entrepreneurs, officials and ” colluding ” public administrators, are 90 clans active in all the supply chains analyzed by Legambiente: from the cement cycle to the waste cycle, from animal trafficking to the exploitation of renewable energies and the distortion of the circular economy.
” The numbers and the stories collected in the report – said Mariateresa Imparato, president of Legambiente Campania – unequivocally demonstrate how environmental crime is essentially a corporate crime. If the mafias continue to be a threat to the environment, a significant part is played by unscrupulous and unscrupulous businesses, entrepreneurs and professionals and unfaithful public employees bound by corruption “.
“The new tools of repression guaranteed by law 68 of 2015, which we managed to get approved by Parliament after 21 years of work – he added – are showing all their validity both on the repressive front and on that of prevention. let your guard down, because the eco-mafias in this period of pandemic are moving and exploiting the economic and social crisis to extend their presence even further but it is urgent to combine the judicial response with a political-institutional response that is still too lacking: the struggle the ecomafia must become the real priority for Campania ”.
Also in 2019 the waste cycle is the sector that records the highest number of environmental crimes with 1,930 alleged crimes, more than 20 per cent, and 1,987 people reported, 19 arrests and 1,074 kidnappings. As regards the phenomenon of the burning of waste, the Report highlights that ” only the parenthesis of the lockdown was able to stop the hand of the arsonists for a moment ”. In the last ten years in Campania 10 million tons of waste have been illegally moved. Campania which – as has been underlined – ” is no longer just land of spill but is also an exporter of illicit waste with routes that go towards northern Italy, north Africa and towards the eastern routes ”. Campania also confirms itself as the ” capital of the cement connection ” with 1645 ascertained crimes and an increase of 40 percent on 2018 with 1238 people reported, 2 arrests and 332 kidnappings carried out.
The Report denounces that ” the demolitions are at stake ”: more than 97 percent of the building abuses to be demolished are ” still firmly in place ” and out of 16,596 demolition orders only 3 percent have been carried out, equal to 496 buildings demolished. Furthermore, in Campania just 2 per cent of these properties are recorded by the municipalities in the real estate registers (equal to 310 properties). But if the crimes continue and increase, so does the commitment and denunciation of associations, committees, citizens. The law on eco-crimes led to the launch of 158 criminal proceedings in Campania and the seizure of 98 assets for a total value of 32.7 million euros.