crime every 18 minutes for a total of 902,356 environmental offences. This is what the eco-mafias have done in Italy in three decades with a constant and incessant attack on the environment. We are talking about an average – from 1992 to 2023 – of 79.7 crimes per day, 3.3 every hour, one every 18 minutes. An impressive rate also marked by 727,771 people reported and 224,485 seizures. To line up numbers is Legambiente, which celebrates the 30th anniversary of the Ecomafia Report and puts forward a package of six proposals on the occasion of the national conference “Environment and legality: together for the future” which it promoted with the Carabinieri.
According to the Report, 45.7% of the national total of crimes ascertained by law enforcement agencies in these three decades is concentrated in the regions where the presence of organized crime is rooted. Sad record for Campania while Lombardy is instead the first region in the North for eco-crimes. In these three decades of research and analysis, from 1995 to April 2024, 378 clans have been surveyed, belonging to all mafia organizations, with direct interests in the various “supply chains” of the ecomafia. The accumulated illegal turnover, according to Legambiente estimates, was 259.8 billion euros.
After Campania follows Calabria with 84,472 offences, Sicily with 82,290 and Puglia with 73,773. In fifth place is Lazio, the first region in Central Italy, with 66,650 crimes. Lombardy, eighth in the standings.
As regards waste trafficking in particular, 608 investigations have been recorded since February 2002, i.e. since the first application of the article on the subject of the Ronchi decree with 3,424 arrests, 10,772 complaints, 1,691 companies involved and 51 foreign states involved, mainly European and African.
In 309 investigations (equal to 50.8% of the total) it was possible to reconstruct the total waste seized, equal to 60.576 million tons: 40.49% is sewage sludge and 39.64% is mixed industrial waste. Transported on a 25-ton truck, 13.6 meters long, the 60,576,000 tons seized would be equivalent to 2,432,040 trucks, for a queue of 32,953 kilometers.
The Report was presented at the Officers’ School in Rome. Among the participants were the Minister of the Environment, Gilberto Pichetto, the president of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into illegal illegalities related to the waste cycle and other environmental and agri-food crimes, Jacopo Morrone, the director general of ISPRA, Maria Siclari, the General of the Army Corps, Andrea Rispoli, Commander of the Carabinieri Forestry, Environmental and Agri-food Unit Command and the General of Division Fernando Nazzaro, Carabinieri Commander for Energy Protection and Security. At the end of the conference, which was awarded the medal of the Presidency of the Republic by President Sergio Mattarella, the winners of the national competition dedicated to education to legality and environmental protection were awarded.