Palumbo Spa cleared of illegal dumping of ‘sandblasting’ waste in Messina by Cassation Court
The case revolved around the alleged illegal dumping of special waste from Messinas Palumbo shipyards, which resulted in a number of convictions before the court of first-instance in 2019. The story revolved around the disposal of ‘grit’ for which different environmental violations and hypotheses were contested.
The central tenet of the initial accusations, which have now been dropped, concerned the hypothesis of the crime of criminal association from 2003 to 2007 “with the aim of committing crimes concerning the organised illegal trafficking of special waste, including dangerous waste, through an indeterminate series of transports and spills, to unknown sites or unauthorised landfills, of large quantities of waste abrasive material (so-called ‘exhaust grit’) produced continuously by paint stripping works (so-called ‘sandblasting’) of ship hulls carried out on the Messina site of Palumbo Spa.”
In essence, the Court of Cassation approved the appeal filed by Palumbo Spa and ordered the annulment without postponement of the conviction for two counts, “because the fact does not exist” and the annulment with postponement, before another section of the Court of Appeal of Messina, for a new judgment, but only for two administrative offences.
Furthermore, the courts deemed non-existent a crime, initially argued against Raffaele Palumbo, owing to the statute of limitations, whereby it confirmed the civil ruling and in turn ordered that the court costs ought to be paid by the civil party WWF.
Palumbo Spa, which was assisted by the lawyer Giro Sepe, in a statement by its current sole director, Alessandra Latino, said that it “is satisfied with this sentence, which has finally re-established the truth about a bitter affair which unjustly involved entire families and businesses”.
On appeal in October 2021, the Napolitan entrepreneur Antonio Palumbo, who was the legal representative of Palumbo Spa at the time, was cleared of all charges with a complete formula, that is, “for not havingcommitted the crime”.
