Page 222 - Supplemento 2-2016 (ENG)

maJ. gen. enzo Bernardini

These Carabinieri specialized units functionally report to the relevant
(rélevant) Ministry to carry out specific missions and tasks assigned in the dif-
ferent policy areas. In detail, the Carabinieri Command for the protection of
environment, articulated on a central Command, an Operational Department
and 29 Operational Units, is responsible for fighting environmental crime, with
special reference to organized crime groups.

This unique array of specialized competencies, combined with the proxi-
mity of territorial units to the citizenship, allows Carabinieri to be at the fore-
front of the protection of environment, of the quality of living and of the
regularity of public funding in agricolture, against frauds, also in products
counterfeiting. It must be pointed out, as other speakers have said before, that
waste disposal and the agri-food sector are among the fields of major interest
for Italian Organised Crime, as many important investigations have demonstra-
ted in the last years. However, as shown by the Permanent Parliament
Committee on waste cycle, it must be said that a part of the waste produced in
Italy is illegally disposed, with great risk of pollution.

This situation of diffused illegality becomes environmental crime when
illegal waste disposal is carried out by industries and firms interested in huge
financial gains by reducing the high costs of legal disposal. Actually, the facili-
tating factors of this area of illegality are the complex nature of the phenome-
non and its the trans-regional or even trans-national nature. But we have to
admit also that the common – wrong - perception of the low impact of envi-
ronmental crime on public security helps criminals to keep a low profile.

Traditional organized crime groups quickly understood the potential busi-
ness of this sector. Organisations like camorra made huge profits in using inti-
midating methods in order to impose their affiliates in the market of products,
or to illegally dispose waste, with great risk for the public health, or to perpe-
trate frauds on EU or public tenders and funds, corruption of public admini-
stration bodies, or again by counterfeiting products.

The unfortunately well known example of “Terra dei Fuochi”, extensively
investigated by Carabinieri units in the last years, showed the combination of
all those factors, leading to the extensive pollution of many areas carried out by
local Camorra affiliates, in many ways: controlling the entire chain from pro-

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