Waste traffic, the prosecutor seizes construction sites on the Novara ring road

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An investigation on waste coordinated by the Milan prosecutor’s office – together with the carabinieri of Milan and Lodi and the tax nucleus of the Gdf of Milan – uncovered an aggravated illegal profit activity, with the consequent seizure of a piece of the Novara ring road, as “those road sections (lots 0 and 1) where the waste has been used” are risky for “public safety if the work, tested on the basis of false data and/or non-compliant material, is opened to vehicular traffic, even heavy ones” . The deputy prosecutor of Milan writes it, Silvia Bonardi.

Overall, assets for an estimated value of 12 million euros were seized in the operation. Under accusation the grouping of companies Novara Scar L, based in the province of Turin, which won the contract, and the Real Estate Cave Sand of Trezzano sul Naviglio, in the province of Milan. In addition to the two companies, they are under investigation for various reasons t king top manager of Novara Scarl e the owner, Marco Lavatelli, and three employees of real estate. In the two decrees it emerges how the administrator and legal representative of the real estate, together with one of his employees, would have conferred building material with a CE marking considered false by the investigators to the Anas construction site in Novara, obtaining an “unfair profit equal to 2,162,230 euros or the total sales of products supplied to Novara Scarl with consequent damage for the Anas contracting station, in relation to the Anas construction site concerning the completion and optimization works of the Turin-Milan road, with the local road system through the interconnection between the Ss 32 Ticinese and the Sp 299 ring road of Novara».

According to the investigators, the three were part of a criminal association whose promoter, the owner of a waste management company with registered office in the province of Asti, would have produced, through an environmental consultant of the same company, agreed technical reports, aimed at obtaining of illegitimate administrative authorizations functional to the management of waste in an illegal manner.

Between 2014 and 2021, the group, through the owner of a brokerage company, allegedly procured six hundred thousand tons of special waste and, after having falsely documented having subjected them to recovery operations to make them lose their status as waste, he would have resold them as material to be used to cover landfills in Piedmont, Lombardy, Veneto, Liguria, Tuscany and Emilia Romagna. According to the indictment, the partnership would have allowed the various landfills receiving the cover product to benefit from the omitted payment of the eco-tax into the municipal coffers, foreseen in case of receipt of waste.

Furthermore, the same sole director of the Real Estate would have had a professional relationship with Pietro Paolo Portolesi, already arrested in May 2022 in the Minotauro investigation, and believed to be close to the ‘Ndrangheta club in Volpiano.