Spumador spa, a well-known company of carbonated drinks with an annual turnover exceeding 200 million euros and whose name had already appeared in an investigation by the Milanese DDA, coordinated by the prosecutors Sara, ends up in judicial administration for a year for infiltrations of the ‘Ndrangheta Ombra and Pasquale Addesso, which in November 2021 led to the arrest of 54 people.
The provision was ordered by the Autonomous Prevention Measures Section of the Court of Milan (judges Roia-Tallarida-Pontani) at the end of the investigations by the Economic and Financial Police Unit of the Gdf of Como, coordinated by the prosecutor Paolo Storari, which revealed “a alleged criminal mechanism aimed at obtaining total control of the company’s transport orders ”, based in Como. Control, the investigators explain, “obtained through repeated extortion conducts, aggravated by the use of the mafia method, to the detriment of managers and employees of the client, in fact subjected to the will of the ‘Ndranghetisti, who imposed their economic conditions” on Spumador.
The motivation of the judges
The judges noted “a serious situation of mafia infiltration in the business activity carried out, lasting from 2018 until today, which has allowed various companies, attributable to exponents of the ‘Ndrangheta, to operate undisturbed in the economic fabric, altering the rules of competition and thus obtaining significant advantages “.
The intervention of the judicial administrator, professor Alberto Dello Strologo, as the judges write in the 50-page decree, “where possible in agreement with the administrative bodies of the company”, that is, supporting them, “must be aimed” at “analyzing the contracts in progress in the main infiltration sector », freight transport, by the ‘Ndrangheta and to“ remove ”those relationships with people linked directly or indirectly to the gangs.
Between 2018 and November 2021 (the date of the arrests in the maxi investigation), the Court further explains, there was a “total subjection” of Spumador to the “extortion claims advanced by the members of the Salerni family with typically mafia methods”. And the “management of the company” would have been “fully aware”, but for a long time it “remained inert”.