(Telestock) – Lucia Morselli, former CEO of Acciaierie d’Italia, is under investigation by the Taranto prosecutor’s office, along with eight other people, accused of criminal association aimed at pollution, environmental disaster and fraud against the State. This is what the Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno reports, according to which investigators believe Morselli is the head of a group of eight other people, including directors of the former Ilva, managers, consultants and employees who over the years have caused damage to the environment, health and even to the state coffers.
In addition to Morselli, his secretary has also been included in the register of suspects Charles Kruger, and the managers of AdI Francesco Alterio, Adolfo Buffo and Paolo Fiettathe former directors of the plant Vincenzo Dimastomatteo and Alessandro Labile, Antonio MuraAdI attorney with the role of Director of Finance, Treasury and Customs and finally the employee Happy Stones.
The contested facts concern the period from 2018 to today, the newspaper highlights. According to the prosecutors from Taranto, coordinated by the prosecutor Eugenia Pontassuglia, they allegedly failed to carry out the necessary maintenance on the pipes of the gas-coke distribution network present in the Coke plant and By-products departments of the former Ilva which would have generated “a significant compromise and deterioration of the air of the city of Taranto – the newspaper highlights, reporting excerpts from the documents – determining a significant and measurable increase in the average annual, monthly, daily concentrations of benzene recorded by the air quality monitoring stations and those inside the plant”. Furthermore, they allegedly failed to maintain the efficiency of the “air pressurization and filtration systems serving operating machines and offices, thus exposing workers to high concentrations of carcinogenic, mutagenic, teratogenic substances”. This investigation is a new investigative branch of the investigation into benzene emissions and the alleged fraud against the State on CO2 quotas, in which Morselli was already under investigation.
“With reference to the news published today by some press organs about the investigation on the former CEO Lucia Morselli, it is worth underlining that what has been reported refers to the past and that since the installation of the new Extraordinary Commissioners, all actions have been activated immediately to verify and guarantee the efficiency and effectiveness of the environmental mitigation measures, implemented since 2014 according to what is established by the Prime Ministerial Decree of 14 March 2014, by the Prime Ministerial Decree of 29 September 2017 and decrees connected to them, in order to respect the legal limits set” reports in a note Steelworks of Italy in As. “Therefore, – the note continues – the objective of the current extraordinary management has been from the very beginning to implement what is necessary to ensure the protection of employees and the Community as a whole. The decision of the Commissioners to renounce the appeal to the TAR by virtue of which the previous Manager had not carried out the Health Impact Assessment (HIA) as requested by the Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security and the Ministry of Health should be seen in this sense. On the contrary, precisely thanks to this renouncement, the Commissioners were able to produce the HIA which was delivered to the relevant Ministries within the established time frame, in order to allow the competent bodies to carry out the assessments within the scope of the renewal of the Integrated Environmental Authorization”.