Page 169 - Supplemento 2-2016 (ENG)

Tackling Environmental Crime throUgh standardized Methodologies

noticed that part of the Campania region criminal organisations was moving
from activities related to drug trafficking to activities in the field of waste traf-
ficking.

This was due to the fact that, at that time, regulations in the sector of
environmental crimes were rather “weak”, very superficial. As a consequence
criminals felt encouraged to convert their activities from drug trafficking into
waste trafficking since – as I was told by an informer previously involved in
drug trafficking- waste trafficking provided equal, if not superior, profits com-
pared to those deriving from drug trafficking. In addition, risks were much
lower as regulations were, as we said earlier, less strict and rigid than those
enforced in drug trafficking.

It was in that very moment, in that situation, that the presence of certain
subjects emerged; entrepreneurs linked to the organised crime - in my specific
case to the region Campania criminal organisation - were operating as represen-
tatives of the criminal organisations in the business links with those enterprises
that wanted to dispose illegally their waste in order to save money. The result
was a remarkable saving compared to the costs they should have sustained for
legal waste disposal. From that moment we started to follow facts related to
illegal waste disposal and later we realised that not always mafia criminal orga-
nisations had a crucial role in the whole matter.

More and more often, those entrepreneurs who wanted to dispose illegally
their waste in order to save on their costs, made contacts with those people
who recently have been called “Organizzazioni di Malaffare” (Criminal
Organisations) and described as criminal-environmental bourgeoisie: indivi-
duals, groups, organisations, sometimes not particularly well structured, all
involved specifically in the illegal waste disposal that assured - as I said earlier-
high illegal profits through the saving on costs for their legal waste disposal.
What did it happen then? What did we find out from our investigations? More
and more often - actually we should say systematically - the activities of illegal
waste disposal were associated with other types of crime, corruption and false
action, in particular.

In fact, in order to be able to dispose waste illegally, on the one hand, it
was necessary the complicity of public bodies, public Officials, public

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